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THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


GIFT  OF 

PAL 


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Wings  of  War 

An  Account  of  the  Important  Contribution 
of     the    United    States    to    Aircraft 
Invention,  Engineering,  Develop- 
ment and  Production  during 
the  World  War 


By 

Theodore  Macfarlane  Knappen 

With  an  Introduction  by 
Rear-Admiral  D.  W.  Taylor 


Chief  Constructed.  U.  S.  N. 


With  43  Illustrations 


G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

New  York  and  London 

vibe  fmfcfcerbocfcer  press 

1920 


COPYRIGHT.  1920 

BY 
THEODORE  M.  KNAPPEN 


Mathematical 
Science- 


PREFACE 

THE  manuscript  of  this  book  was  written  in  1919. 
The  numerous  Congressional  investigations  of  the 
management  of  the  war  which  have  taken  place 
since  the  writing  have  revealed  many  shortcomings 
in  both  the  army  and  navy  that  were  concealed 
during  the  conflict  period — and  aircraft  produc- 
tion is  no  longer  singled  out  for  a  monopoly  of  hos- 
tile criticism  and  sweeping  condemnation,  as  it  was 
in  the  unhappy  days  when  its  managers  were  seek- 
ing to  accomplish  the  impossible.  Time  is  a  great 
adjuster  of  judgments  as  well  as  a  healer  of  wounds, 
and  it  is  the  writer's  belief  that  the  ultimate  ver- 
dict of  history  will  virtually  coincide  with  the 
conclusion  reached  in  the  following  pages  that  in- 
stead of  being,  as  was  once  universally  believed, 
the  outstanding  industrial  fiasco  of  America's  part 
in  the  World  War,  the  aircraft  achievements  de- 
serve to  rank  with  any  of  those  of  our  "second  line 
of  defense,"  which,  taken  as  a  whole,  were  highly 
creditable. 

iii 


iv  Preface 

The  war  happily  came  to  an  end  too  soon  for 
our  huge  industrial  conversions  and  mobilizations 
to  enjoy  the  spectacular  triumph  that  would  have 
been  theirs  in  the  spring  of  1919.  Nevertheless, 
the  knowledge  of  the  Central  Empires  that  a 
country  that  was  as  innocent  of  knowledge  of 
the  art  of  making  military  aircraft  in  the  spring 
of  1917  as  it  was  before  the  Wright  Brothers 
made  their  first  flight  in  a  heavier-than-air  ma- 
chine, was,  in  the  fall  of  1918,  producing  air  service 
engines  in  greater  volume  than  all  the  rest  of  the 
Allies  together,  with  a  similar  preeminence  in  the 
production  of  'planes  rapidly  approaching  and  a 
magical  expansion  of  all  related  productivities,  had 
its  certain  and  conclusive  though  undramatic  effect 
on  the  moral  and  mental  processes  that  led  to  the 
collapse  of  Germany  before  the  death-blow  was 
delivered. 

T.  M.  K. 

WASHINGTON,  D.  C. 
May  i,  1920. 


INTRODUCTION 

THE  story  of  the  United  States  army  aircraft 
production  program  is  essentially  a  story  of  con- 
fident hopes,  bitter  disappointments,  failures,  and 
successes  such  as  inevitably  attend  the  creation 
from  nothing  of  an  immense  industrial  organiza- 
tion. The  existing  publications  which  give  the 
history  of  this  undertaking  are  largely  the  volumi- 
nous reports  of  congressional  and  other  investi- 
gating committees  which  throw  into  strong  relief 
all  failures  and  unfortunate  circumstances,  and 
gloss  over  with  very  scant  mention  the  successes 
and  the  fortunate  circumstances.  For  this  reason, 
it  is  especially  desirable  that  a  less  one-sided  ac- 
count of  the  army  air  effort  be  published,  and, 
hence,  I  am  glad  to  see  the  appearance  of  this  book. 

The  conception  of  a  tremendous  air  program, 
and  the  courage  to  undertake  it  in  spite  of  the  ob- 
vious difficulties  is,  in  my  opinion,  due  to  General 
Squier  and  Colonel  Deeds,  and,  since  these  offi- 
cers have  received  public  criticism  for  any  and  all 
shortcomings  in  the  program,  it  is  no  more  than 


vi  Introduction 

fair  that  they  should  also  receive  the  credit  for  the 
wonderful  success  of  other  parts  of  the  program. 

The  entire  American  aviation  program  centered 
in  the  conception,  development,  and  production  of 
the  Liberty  motor,  and  this  I  consider  one  of  the 
outstanding  achievements  of  the  War.  The  army 
staked  much  on  the  Liberty  engine,  but  the  navy 
staked  everything.  The  navy,  in  fact,  for  its 
service  'planes  adopted  a  100%  Liberty  motored 
program,  calling  for  a  series  of  large  flying  boats 
engined  with  one,  two,  or  three  Liberty  motors. 
This  program  was  adopted  by  the  Navy  Depart- 
ment before  the  Liberty  motor  was  fully  proved. 
It  is  of  interest  to  record  the  fact  that  the  first 
Liberty  motor  to  fly  was  mounted  in  a  naval  sea- 
plane, the  first  twin  Liberty  motors  were  flown  in 
a  naval  seaplane,  and,  finally,  the  Atlantic  was 
crossed  by  four  Liberty  motors  in  a  naval  seaplane. 

Since  the  navy  relied  upon  the  army  for  its 
Liberty  motors  upon  which  its  program  was  based, 
and  since  the  army  delivered  the  goods  in  this 
respect  so  that  the  navy  program  was  not  delayed  a 
day  by  failure  to  have  those  wonderful  motors  ready 
when  the  navy  'planes  were  ready  for  their  in- 
stallation, it  is  natural  that  those  of  us  in  the  navy 
who  had  to  struggle  with  the  production  of  'planes 
should  have  in  our  hearts  a  warm  spot  for  our 


Introduction  vii 

brothers  in  the  army  who  conceived  and  pro- 
duced, with  such  astonishing  success,  the  Liberty 
motor. 

The  history  of  the  navy's  aircraft  production 
program  has  not  been  covered  by  the  proceedings 
of  investigating  committees.  The  navy's  problem 
was  undertaken  successfully  with  the  existing 
naval  industrial  organization.  The  navy  was, 
therefore,  spared  the  tribulations  incident  to  or- 
ganizing a  brand  new  industrial  machine,  tribula- 
tions which  are  little  understood  or  appreciated  by 
the  layman.  Also,  the  navy's  problem  was  of  less 
difficulty  than  the  army's  because  not  on  such  a 
gigantic  scale.  The  navy  entered  the  war  with 
an  existing  shipbuilding  organization,  provided 
with  aeronautical  engineers,  wind  tunnel  research 
facilities,  training  seaplanes  and  airships,  and  an 
adequate  training  station. 

The  naval  program  of  service  'planes  was  adopted 
in  the  fall  of  1917,  and  was  never  changed  except 
to  be  increased  twice  as  to  numbers.  Produc- 
tion was  going  ahead  with  full  volume  in  the 
spring  of  1918,  and,  by  September,  1918,  all  fifteen 
naval  air  stations  abroad,  as  well  as  our  own 
coast-patrol  stations,  had  been  shipped  full  com- 
plements of  service  'planes.  Shipments  were  then 
stopped,  and  steps  taken  to  slow  production.  The 


viii  Introduction 

armistice  came  before  shipments  abroad  had  to 
be  resumed.  "Happy  the  people  whose  annals 
are  uninteresting." 

D.  W.  TAYLOR, 
Rear  Admiral  (C.C.),  U.S.N., 
Chief  of  Bureau  of  Construction  and  Repair. 

WASHINGTON,  May,  1920. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I. — THE  TASK  SET  BEFORE  THE  BUILDERS  i 

II. — BEFORE  THE  WAR          .        .         .  7 

III. — THE  BEGINNING     ....  14 

IV. — MAKING  UP  FOR  LOST  TIME     .         »  22 

V. — SEEKING  GUIDANCE         .        .        .  33 

VI. — TRAINING,  'PLANES  AND  ENGINES      .  39 

VII. — THE  BOLLING  COMMISSION  AND  FOREIGN 

ASSISTANCE         .        »        .         .51 

VIII. — ORIGIN  OF  THE  LIBERTY  ENGINE        .      63 

IX. — BIRTH  OF  THE  LIBERTY  ENGINE         .      76 

X. — MAKING  THE  FIRST  LIBERTY  MOTORS    85 

XI. — LIBERTY  ENGINE  PRODUCTION          .     102 

XII. — INCIDENTS  OF  LIBERTY  ENGINE  PRO- 
DUCTION       116 

XIII. — DEVELOPMENT  AND  PRODUCTION  OF 

ENGINES  OTHER  THAN  THE  LIBERTY    122 

XIV. — CENTRALIZATION  OF  MANUFACTURING 

RESPONSIBILITY  .         .        .        .132 

XV. — THE  WRESTLE  WITH  THE  'PLANES  .     144 
ix 


Contents 


XVI. — THE  PROBLEM  OF  THE  NIGHT-BOMB- 
ING MACHINES  .  .  .  .162 

XVII. — AIRPLANE  PRODUCTION  RESULTS      .     171 
XVIII. — THE  STRIVING  FOR  SPRUCE     .         .174 

XIX. — DEVELOPMENT  AND  PRODUCTION  OF 

DOPE  AND  COTTON  FABRIC  .     181 

XX. — MACHINE  GUNS  FOR  AIRCRAFT         .     189 

XXI. — RADIO  TELEPHONE  AND  AERIAL  PHO- 
TOGRAPHY IN  CONNECTION  WITH 
AERIAL  OBSERVATION,  THE  CHIEF 
FUNCTION  OF  MILITARY  AVIATION  197 

XXII. — AIRPLANE  BOMBS,  AERIAL  PYRO- 
TECHNICS, AND  AVIATORS'  PER- 
SONAL EQUIPMENT,  ETC.  .  .215 

XXIII. — MILITARY  BALLOONS       .         .         .     225 

XXIV. — TRAINING     FIELDS,      CAMPS,      AND 

SUPPLY       »       . .  .         .     238 

XXV. — NAVAL  AIRCRAFT  PRODUCTION          .  245 

XXVI. — "LYNCHING  THE  AIRCRAFTERS"        .  261 

XXVIL— REVIEW  AND  PROSPECT  .        .         .  272 

INDEX 283 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

THE  NC  4,  LIBERTY-ENGINE-DRIVEN  CON- 
QUEROR OF  THE  ATLANTIC,  IN  FLIGHT  AT 
PENSACOLA,  FLORIDA.  .  .  Frontispiece 

Navy  Photo 

ENTHUSIASM  AROUSING  MEETING  OF  AIRPLANE 
WORKERS  IN  THE  HEAT  OF  WAR'S  FEVER  26 

A  TYPICAL  "SPEED-UP"  MEETING  OF  AIRCRAFT 
WORKERS  ......  42 

FRENCH-MADE  AMERICAN  SPAD  AT  THE 
FRONT  ...  .  .;  .  .  .54 

"THE  FLYING  FISH,"  A  DECORATED  NIEUPORT 
AT  THE  FRONT  .  .  .  .  .  54 

U.  S.  Air  Service  Photo 

LIBERTY  MOTORS  UNDER  THE  DYNAMOMETER 
TEST ,  .62 

WOMAN  OPERATOR  MACHINING  CYLINDERS  OF 
LIBERTY  MOTORS  (AT  THE  CADILLAC  PLANT, 
DETROIT).  THE  WAR  EMERGENCY  NECESSI- 
TATED THE  EMPLOYMENT  OF  THOUSANDS  OF 

WOMEN  IN  THE  AIRCRAFT  INDUSTRY      .      .  .      88 

PACKARD  MOTOR  CAR  COMPANY  PLANT  AT 
DETROIT.  ORIGINAL  PLANT  AND  EMERGENCY 


xii  Illustrations 

PAGE 

EXTENSION,  DEVOTED  LARGELY  TO  LIBERTY 
ENGINE  PRODUCTION  DURING  THE  WAR      .      92 

LINCOLN  MOTOR  COMPANY  PLANT  AT  DETROIT, 
RUSHED  TO  COMPLETION  IN  RECORD  TIME 
FOR  MANUFACTURE  OF  LIBERTY  ENGINES. 
BUILDING  ERECTED,  ORGANIZATION  OF  6,000 
PERSONS  CREATED,  AND  2,000  LIBERTY 
MOTORS  PRODUCED,  ALL  IN  TWELVE 
MONTHS 92 

ASSEMBLING  LIBERTY  MOTORS  AT  THE  PLANT 
OF  THE  LINCOLN  MOTOR  Co.  .  .  .106 

SECTION  OF  TRACK  SYSTEM  FOR  MACHINING 
UPPER  HALF  OF  LIBERTY  MOTOR  CRANK 
CASE,  LINCOLN  MOTOR  Co.  *  .  .  106 

AT  WORK  ON  LIBERTY  ENGINE  PARTS  AT  THE 
PACKARD  PLANT  .  .  ,.  ,.114 

A  CURTISS  TRAINING  PLANE  AT  KELLY 
FIELD *  .  136 

U.  S.  Air  Service  Photo 

ELMWOOD  PLANT  OF  THE  CURTISS  AEROPLANE 
AND  MOTOR  CORPORATION,  BUFFALO,  NEW 
YORK,  ERECTED  EXCLUSIVELY  FOR  WAR 
AIRPLANE  WORK,  AND  EMPLOYED  15,000  PER- 
SONS   136 

INSTALLING  LIBERTY  ENGINES  IN  DH-4's  AT 
THE  DAYTON-WRIGHT  PLANT  .  .  .144 

GENERAL  ARRANGEMENT  OF  THROTTLE  AND 
GAS  CONTROL,  AND  OTHER  INSTRUMENTS  IN 
PILOT'S  COCKPIT  OF  A  DH-4.  THE  NUMER- 


Illustrations  xiii 


ous  INSTALLATIONS  IN  A  LIMITED  SPACE  WERE 
A  HARD  PROBLEM  FOR  THE  DESIGNERS       .     146 
U.  S.  Air  Service  Photo 

MAKING  AIRPLANE  WINGS     . '.      .        .        .150 

BIRD'S-EYE  VIEW  OF  THE  DAYTON-WRIGHT 
AIRPLANE  COMPANY'S  PLANT  AT  MORAINE, 
NEAR  DAYTON,  OHIO  .  .  .  .150 

A  LOENING  MONOPLANE  ON  THE  GROUND      .     158 

U.  S.  Air  Service  Photo 

LOENING  MONOPLANE  IN  FLIGHT  IN  THE 
CLOUDS  .  .  .  .  -.  .  .158 

GENERAL  PEYTON  C.  MARCH,  CHIEF-OF-STAFF, 
PRESIDENT  AND  MRS.  WILSON,  INSPECTING 
HANDLEY-PAGE    BOMBER   AT   WASHINGTON. 
SMALL  SINGLE-SEATER  AT  RIGHT         .        .162 
U.  S.  Air  Service  Photo 

THE   HAVILAND  9,  SUCCESSOR  TO  THE   DH-4    164 

THE  FIRST  AMERICAN-BUILT  LIBERTY- 
CAPRONI 164 

GLENN  MARTIN  BOMBER  WITH  Two  LIBERTY 
ENGINES   .         .         .        .        .         .         .     170 

U.  S.  Air  Service  Photo 

CURTIS  JN  4  TRAINING  PLANE,  SHOWING  MAR- 
LIN  MACHINE  GUN  AND  PART  OF  SYNCHRONIZ- 
ING DEVICE  ......  190 


xiv  Illustrations 

PAGE 

OBSERVER'S  SEAT  IN  DH-4,  SHOWING  LEWIS 
MACHINE  GUNS  ON  UNIVERSAL  MOUNT       .     200 
U.  S.  Air  Service  Photo 

VIEW  OF  OBSERVER'S  COCKPIT  IN  DH-4,  SHOWING 
GENERAL  ARRANGEMENT  OF  APPARATUS,  IN- 
CLUDING WIRELESS  SENDING  AND  RECEIVING 
OUTFIT,  AND  SCARFF  MOUNTS  FOR  LEWIS  GUNS  206 

A  COMPLETELY  EQUIPPED  DE  HAVILAND  4, 
SHOWING  BOMB  RACKS  UNDER  LOWER  WING, 
AND  FORE  AND  AFT  MACHINE  GUNS  .  216 

U.  S.  Air  Service  Photo 

AVIATOR'S  OXYGEN  MASK  IN  POSITION,  READY 
FOR  USE  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  220 

FILM  FROM  MACHINE-GUN  CAMERA  SHOWING 
"SHOTS"  .  .  •«  .  .  .  222 

A  NAVY  "BLIMP" — NON-RIGID  DIRIGIBLE — IN 
THE  AIR  .  ...  .  .  .  226 

6-CYLINDER,  IOO-H.  P.  REAR  WINDLASS  ENGINE 
CATERPILLAR,  TRACTOR  ADAPTER,  FOR  TOW- 
ING AND  CONTROLLING  OBSERVATION  BAL- 
LOONS .  .  .  .  , .  .  .  230 

CAQUOT  "SAUSAGE"  BALLOON,  BEGINNING  ITS 
ASCENT 230 

U.  S.  Air  Service  Photo 

A  UNIT  ASSEMBLY  ROOM  IN  THE  B.  F.  GOOD- 
RICH COMPANY'S  BALLOON  PLANT  AT  AKRON, 
OHIO  . .  .  .  .  .  .  -234 

U.  S.  Air  Service  Photo 


Illustrations 


XV 


PAGB 

CAPTURED  CAQUOT  "SAUSAGE"  BALLOON        .     240 

PARTIAL  VIEW  FROM  THE  AIR  OF  THE  VAST 
AMERICAN  AIR  SERVICE  ASSEMBLY  REPAIR 
AND  SALVAGE  SHOPS  AT  ROMORANTIN, 
FRANCE  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  244 

U.  S.  Air  Service  Photo 

HULLS  OF  F-5-L  TYPE  SEAPLANES.     CURTISS-  ^ 
ELM  WOOD  PLANT,  BUFFALO         .         .         .     250 

U.  S.  Air  Service  Photo 

FINAL  ASSEMBLY  OF  FLYING  BOATS  AT  CURTISS 
PLANT,  ELMWOOD,  BUFFALO  .  .  .  250 

U.  S.  Air  Service  Photo 

CAPTAIN  K.  G.  PULLIAM,  JR.,  AND  His  15- 
METER,  DECORATED  NIEUPORT  PLANE,  "THE 
JAZBO"  .1 252 

AMERICAN-MADE  HANDLEY-PAGE  BOMBER  WITH 
SINGLE-SEATER  AT  LEFT  ....  252 

PARTIAL  VIEW  OF  THE  GREAT  A.  E.  F.  AIR  SER- 
VICE TRAINING  SCHOOL  AT  ISSOUDUN, 
FRANCE  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  260 

U.  S.  Air  Service  Photo 

TUNING  UP  A  SPAD  IN  A  FIELD  HANGAR  AT  THE 
FRONT  .  .  »  .  .  .  .  260 

U.  S.  Air  Service  Photo 

I48TH  AMERICAN  AERO  SQUADRON  AT  THE 
FRONT,  AT  PETITE-SYTHE,  FRANCE,  EQUIPPED 
WITH  SOPWITH-CAMEL  PLANES  .  .  .  276 

U.  S.  Air  Service  Photo 


WINGS  OF  WAR 


CHAPTER  I 

THE  TASK  SET  BEFORE  THE  BUILDERS 

THE  entire  air  force  of  the  United  States  of 
America  broke  down  and  disappeared  in  the  tri- 
fling contest  with  the  Mexican  bandit,  Villa,  in 
1916.  A  year  later  the  nation  whose  air  forces  and 
material  were  so  pitifully  small  that  they  were 
unable  to  cope  with  the  reconnaissance  problems 
offered  by  the  activities  of  a  Mexican  bandit  was 
called  upon  to  plunge  into  the  greatest  aircraft 
production  program  and  into  the  training  and 
organization  of  the  largest  flying  personnel  the 
world  had  seen. 

It  was  almost  as  if  some  armorer  of  the  feudal 
ages,  after  making  his  first  arquebus,  had  been 
called  upon  to  make  modern  rifles  by  the  millions. 
Or,  as  if  the  artificers  who  cast  the  fifteenth-cen- 
tury "mystery"  guns  that  conquered  Constanti- 


2  Wings  of  War 

nople  and  crushed  the  Byzantine  Empire  for  the 
Turk  had  in  a  moment  been  ordered  to  produce 
the  fifteen-inch  guns  of  a  modern  battleship  or 
fortress. 

We  knew  nothing,  one  might  say,  of  aircraft ;  and 
we  were  required  to  know  all.  We  had  done 
nothing ;  and  it  was  demanded  of  us  that  we  should 
do  all.  We  had  altogether  of  every  kind  and  des- 
cription, when  the  war  with  Germany  came,  some 
60  planes  all  told.  In  the  preceding  year  we  had 
ordered  366  machines,  had  succeeded  in  getting  64 
delivered,  and  so  great  was  this  task  for  our  manu- 
facturers that  they  had  asked  to  be  relieved  of 
most  of  their  contract  obligations.  They  had  tried 
to  build  366  airplanes  in  a  year  and  confessed  to 
an  80  per  cent,  failure. 

We  lacked  aeronautical  engineers,  we  lacked 
large  plants,  we  lacked  skilled  workmen,  and, 
although  the  war  in  Europe  had  been  raging  for 
almost  three  years,  we  lacked  absolutely  knowledge 
of  aeronautical  military  requirements.  In  fact  we 
had  not  built  a  single  land  combat  plane  of  any 
description  either  for  ourselves  or  the  Allies.  We 
were  as  ignorant  as  a  child  unborn  of  the  nature  of 
the  equipment  of  a  military  'plane. 

Suddenly  we  plunged  all  unprepared  into  the 
war  and  with  a  unanimous  voice  the  Allies  and  our 


The  Task  Set  before  the  Builders  3 

own  people  declared  that  perhaps  our  greatest  con- 
tribution to  the  war  would  be  such  vast  numbers 
of  airplanes  that  the  German  army  would  be 
blinded  and  the  whole  German  Empire  overhung 
with  a  cloud  of  hostile  airplanes.  Almost  gayly  in 
our  ignorance  we  undertook  within  three  months 
after  the  declaration  of  war  a  program  calling  for 
the  completion  within  one  year  of  22,500 'planes. 
We  proposed  to  manufacture  and  maintain  at  the 
front  4500  machines.  At  this  time  France  and 
England  between  them,  after  many  years  of  prepa- 
ration and  three  years  of  active  combat,  had  been 
able  to  maintain  at  the  front  not  more  than  2000 
combat  machines.  Had  it  not  been  for  our  blissful 
ignorance  of  the  magnitude  and  complexities  of  the 
task,  we  would  never  have  undertaken  it.  We 
were  fools,  rushing  in  where  angels  feared  to  tread. 
Yet  if  we  had  not  undertaken  so  much  we  would 
not  have  done  as  much  as  we  did.  Had  it  not  been 
for  our  optimism  and  our  sublime  confidence  we 
would  have  undertaken  little  and  accomplished  less. 
The  impossible  was  undertaken  and  its  accom- 
plishment was  glowingly  foretold;  it  was  not 
achieved  but  the  spirit  that  dared  so  much  and 
predicted  so  much  was  the  spirit  that  made  it  pos- 
sible actually  to  do  so  much. 
The  task  was  of  such  unparalleled  magnitude  and 


4  Wings  of  War 

so  bewildering  in  its  complexity  that  the  men  who 
undertook  to  carry  it  through  were  only  able  to 
stimulate  themselves  for  the  stupendous  work  by 
dwelling  on  its  colossal  proportions  as  something 
that  they  must  and  would  overcome,  without  reflect- 
ing overmuch  on  the  relations  between  its  dimen- 
sions and  the  caliber  of  the  instrumentalities  with 
which  it  was  to  be  accomplished.  They  refreshed 
themselves  for  the  daily  effort  against  the  awesome 
job  by  the  continual  contemplation  of  it  as  a  thing 
accomplished.  They  lived  and  worked  in  a  sort  of 
dream  of  mighty  deeds  that  must  be  done.  They 
were  self -hypnotized  and  ofttimes  spoke  and  acted 
as  if  the  will  to  do  was  the  thing  done.  Their 
enthusiasm  and  confidence  were  communicated  to 
all  who  were  associated  with  them.  Everybody 
undertook  the  impossible  and  was  sure  it  could 
be  done.  Manufacturers  who  had  never  built  an 
airplane  engine  contracted  to  produce  them  more 
rapidly  and  in  greater  volume  than  the  greatest 
builders  of  Europe  would  have  dreamed  of.  Opti- 
mism reacted  on  optimism,  confidence  was  ex- 
panded by  answering  confidence.  Thus  arose  a 
sort  of  dreamland  of  herculean  effort  united 
with  an  illusory  sanguineness,  out  of  which 
came  magnificent  courage,  wonderful  audacity, 
and  almost  superhuman  achievements,  which 


The  Task  Set  before  the  Builders  5 

were  still  short  of  what  had  been  confidently 
predicted. 

The  aircrafters  were  judged  not  by  what  they 
did,  but  by  what  the  public  came  to  believe  that 
they  could  do.  They  went  at  their  task  as  a 
climber  approaches  a  high  mountain — by  looking 
always  upward  to  the  eternal  snows  and  pro- 
ceeding steadily  in  the  direction  of  the  summit 
without  discouraging  himself  by  visualizing  the 
intervening  difficulties.  Had  our  aircraft  managers 
and  manufacturers  fully  realized  at  the  start  how 
many  gullies  and  valleys  and  canyons,  how  many 
rough  slopes,  how  many  precipices  and  crevasses 
were  in  their  way,  how  much  they  would  have  to 
go  down  in  order  to  go  up,  before  they  reached 
the  summit,  they  would  have  given  up  in  despair. 
Looking  back  now  in  the  fatigue  and  reaction  of 
achievement  they  would  not  dare  to  undertake 
what  they  finally  did  accomplish. 

In  the  making  of  almost  everything  else  that  was 
essential  to  the  material  side  of  the  war,  America 
was  more  or  less  experienced.  We  had  built  ships 
before  and  we  knew  all  the  arts  of  cannon-making. 
We  were  expert  armorers,  we  were  the  world's 
premier  makers  of  rifles,  and  we  had  built  vast 
quantities  of  machine  guns.  We  were  the  chief 
manufacturers  of  military  explosives.  We  even 


6  Wings  of  War 

had  the  nucleus  of  a  great  army  and  we  had  a 
powerful  navy.  But  in  the  building  of  aircraft  we 
were  as  children ;  yet  to  us  was  assigned  the  greatest 
effort,  comparatively,  in  that  of  which  we  knew 
least. 

Ignorant  of  the  aerial  arts,  the  task  set  for  us 
was  nothing  less  than  the  conquest  of  the  air.  The 
war  was  to  be  won  in  the  air.  All  the  efforts  of 
France,  England,  and  Italy  had  not  been  sufficient 
to  produce  that  vast  aerial  armada  that  was  to 
encompass  the  German  armies  and  the  German 
Empire  above  as  fleets  and  armies  had  encompassed 
them  below.  Ignorant  as  we  were,  our  task  was 
to  convert  our  vast  manufacturing  resources  and 
genius  for  mass  production  from  known  to  unknown 
work,  do  it  with  surpassing  speed,  and  gain  for 
the  Allies  the  dominion  of  the  air. 


CHAPTER  II 

BEFORE  THE  WAR 

THE  heavier-than-air  flying  machine  was  in- 
vented in  America.  It  was  used  and  applied 
elsewhere.  The  Wright  brothers  first  flew  in  a  self- 
propelled  airplane,  at  Kittyhawk,  North  Carolina, 
on  December  17,  1902.  Sixteen  years  later,  the 
birthland  of  the  airplane,  drawn  into  the  vortex  of 
the  very  world  war  the  Wrights  believed  the  air- 
plane would  make  impossible,  when  sufficiently 
developed  and  multiplied,  was  woefully  lacking  in 
knowledge  of  the  science  and  art  of  aeronautics 
and  aircraft  manufacture. 

When  the  Germans  struck  their  sudden  and 
treacherous  blow  in  August,  1914,  they  had  1200 
military  airplanes,  France  had  300,  England  250. 
The  United  States  had  practically  none.  Three 
years  later  when  the  war  engulfed  us  we  still  had 
practically  none.  There  was  not  a  man  in  the 
American  army  who  had  ever  flown  in  a  fighting 
'plane  of  any  sort,  unless  possibly  as  a  guest; 

7 


8  Wings  of  War 

scarcely  anyone  except  the  military  observers  had 
even  seen  such  a  thing  as  a  modern  military  'plane. 
Our  little  aviation  section  of  the  Signal  Corps  had 
some  machines  but  by  no  stretch  of  the  imagina- 
tion could  they  be  called  fighting  'planes.  The 
total  personnel  of  the  aviation  section  was  52 
officers,  noo  enlisted  men,  and  210  civilians. 
Probably  not  more  than  a  dozen  of  this  force  were 
expert  flyers.  There  were  not  enough  of  them  to 
make  even  a  respectable  start  in  training  recruits. 
This  meager  body  of  men  had  at  their  disposal  less 
than  a  hundred  machines — of  almost  as  many 
types  as  there  were  machines.  The  government 
whose  inventive  sons,  the  Wright  brothers,  had 
given  the  aeroplane  to  the  world,  had  during  eight 
years  of  mild  and  skeptical  Congressional  interest 
in  aeronautics  managed  to  collect  54  machines  and 
had  actually  ordered  59.  In  1916,  after  the  war  in 
Europe  had  been  raging  with  frightful  and  ominous 
intensity  for  two  years,  we  got  around  to  ordering 
366  airplanes ;  but  only  64  were  delivered.  It  cook 
the  nine  leading  manufacturers  of  the  country  a 
year  to  produce  an  average  of  five  'planes  a  month, 
and  most  of  them  asked  to  be  relieved  of  a  part  of 
what  they  had  undertaken  to  do.  From  the  stand- 
point of  quantitative  production  the  business  of 
aircraft  manufacturing  was  almost  non-existent  in 


Before  the  War  9 

the  United  States.  There  was  only  one  'plane 
plant  that  was  entitled  to  be  called  a  large  factory. 
The  rest  were  hardly  more  than  shops — some  of 
them  ludicrous  shops.  There  were  many  manu- 
facturing concerns  on  paper  and  quite  a  number 
had  offices,  but  there  were  only  six  or  seven  that 
had  really  done  anything  even  in  the  small  pre- 
bellum  way. 

There  were  perhaps  a  dozen  aeronautical  engi- 
neers in  the  whole  country  who  were  men  of 
marked  ability  and  recognized  achievements,  but 
not  one  of  them  was  then  competent  to  design  a 
complete  up-to-date  fighting  aeroplane  without 
further  acquainting  himself  with  the  development 
of  military  aircraft  in  Europe.  In  brief,  in  a  broad 
way  of  speaking,  we  had  neither  factories,  manu- 
facturers, nor  engineers.  We  were  as  helpless  tech- 
nically and  industrially  as  we  were  militarily — if 
not  more  so. 

Some  manufacturing  had  begun  of  engines  of 
foreign  design  on  orders  from  the  Allies.  Thus  the 
Wright-Martin  Company,  of  New  Brunswick, 
N.  J.,  had  taken  up  the  manufacture  of  the 
Hispano-Suiza  engine;  and  the  General  Vehicle 
Company,  of  Long  Island  City,  N.  Y.,  had  begun 
to  make  some  Gnome  motors.  The  Curtiss  Com- 
pany was  making  its  own  engines,  the  OX  and 


io  Wings  of  War 

the  OXX,  the  former  being  of  about  100  horse- 
power for  use  in  training  machines  and  the  latter 
being  of  200  horsepower  for  navy  training  'planes. 
The  Sturtevant  Company  was  building  an  engine 
of  135  horsepower  and  the  Thomas-Morse  Com- 
pany was  producing  an  engine  that  was  to  be  an 
improvement  on  the  Sturtevant.  The  Hall-Scott 
Company  was  next  to  the  Curtiss  the  largest  pro- 
ducer, and  was  making  four-  and  six-cylinder 
engines.  The  Packard  Motor  Car  Company,  the 
Pierce- Arrow  Company,  the  Knox  Motors,  the 
Duesenberg  Motors  Corporation,  the  Union  Iron 
Works,  the  Wisconsin  Engine  Company,  and 
others  were  developing  engines. 

Among  the  engineers  were  Glen  Curtiss  of  the 
Curtiss  Company  and  several  associates;  Orville 
Wright;  Willard  of  the  L.  W.  F.  and  later  of 
the  Aeromarine  Company;  Charles  Day  of  the 
Standard  Aero  Corporation;  Starling  Burgess  of 
the  Burgess  Company;  Grover  C.  Loening  of 
the  Sturtevant  Company;  B.  D.  Thomas  of  the 
Thomas-Morse  Company;  C.  M.  Vought  of  Lewis 
&  Vought,  New  York  City;  Glenn  L.  Martin  of 
Los  Angeles;  J.  C.  Hunsaker  of  the  navy;  and 
Capt.  V.  E.  Clark  of  the  Signal  Corps. 

J.  G.  Vincent,  chief  engineer  of  the  Packard 
Motor  Car  Company,  had  been  engaged  in  motor 


Before  the  War  u 

research  and  development  work  for  two  years  and 
had  produced  several  different  models  of  12-cylin- 
der  aviation  engines  of  from  125  to  225  horsepower 
with  the  result  that  he  had  collected  a  vast  amount 
of  data  regarding  aviation  engines  and  had  gath- 
ered around  him  an  efficient  experimental  and  lab- 
oratory organization.  This  recent  experience  was 
added  to  a  rich  experience  in  the  designing  and 
quantity  production  of  automobile  engines — the 
sort  of  experience  the  aircraft  manufacturers  and 
engineers  proper  mostly  lacked. 

E.  J.  Hall  of  the  Hall-Scott  Motor  Car  Company 
had  worked  developmentally  on  aviation  motors 
for  eight  years  and  had  got  into  a  very  considerable 
production  of  a  number  of  different  types  which 
his  company  had  delivered  to  the  governments  of 
Russia,  Norway,  China,  Japan,  Australia,  Canada, 
and  Britain.  He  had  also  completed  a  12 -cylinder 
engine  of  300  horsepower,  but  like  the  Vincent 
models  it  was  too  heavy  in  relation  to  its  horse- 
power to  be  suitable  for  military  purposes.  Mr. 
Hall  thus  had  a  long  and  very  practical  experience 
in  aviation  motor  engineering  and  was  familiar 
with  the  problems  of  quantity  production. 

The  largest  order  any  manufacturer  had  ever 
had  from  the  United  States  Government  before 
1917  was  22;  and  the  Curtiss  Company,  which  re- 


12  Wings  of  War 

ceived  that,  had  only  made  a  limited  number  of 
training  and  some  experimental  seaplanes  on  for- 
eign account.  None  of  the  manufacturers  or  en- 
gineers knew  much  about  fighting  'planes.  None 
of  them  had  ever  sent  any  except  seaplanes  to 
Europe.  No  land  airplane  made  in  America  had 
ever  except,  possibly,  experimentally  carried  a 
machine  gun  or  any  but  the  most  ordinary  and 
civilian  equipment.  Such  things  as  oxygen  appa- 
ratus, radio  telegraph  and  telephone,  landing  flares, 
electric  lighting  apparatus,  bomb-dropping  devices, 
observation  cameras,  special  compasses,  machine 
guns  adapted  to  airplanes,  instruments  for  meas- 
uring heights  and  speed,  and  many  others  were  an 
unopened  book  to  American  'plane  designers  and 
manufacturers.  Yet  their  importance  and  the  dif- 
ficulty of  designing  and  procuring  and  adjusting 
them  to  the  machines  were  so  great  that  they  after- 
wards came  directly  or  indirectly  to  be  the  chief 
factor  in  the  retardation  of  quantity  production. 
Had  it  not  been  for  them  combat  'planes  would 
have  been  produced  in  the  United  States  on  a  large 
scale  several  months  earlier  than  actually  was  the 
case. 

This,  then,  was  the  situation  of  aviation  and 
aeronautical  science  and  art  in  the  United  States 
at  the  beginning  of  the  war:  only  a  handful  of 


Before  the  War  13 

experienced  flyers,  of  whom  none  had  real  military 
experience;  only  seven  or  eight  manufacturing 
plants  that  could  even  by  courtesy  be  called  such ; 
not  more  than  a  dozen  aeronautical  engineers,  and 
none  of  them  competent,  by  reason  of  inexperience, 
to  design  a  fighting  'plane;  some  engineering  and 
manufacturing  experience  in  the  development  and 
production  of  aviation  engines ;  no  military  organi- 
zation worthy  of  mention ;  very  few  workmen  used 
to  the  refinements  of  manufacture  required  in  the 
production  of  such  a  delicate  and  yet  powerful 
machine  as  an  aviation  motor. 

This  was  the  preparation  with  which  in  1916  we 
looked  forward  into  the  dread  year  that  was  to  see 
our  entry  into  the  tempest  of  the  European  War. 

This  was  the  domestic  foundation  on  which  reso- 
lute men  were  within  a  few  months  to  be  called  to 
build  the  greatest  aircraft  industry  in  the  world. 
No  proper  understanding  of  the  magnitude  and 
difficulties  of  their  task,  no  measure  of  their  degree 
of  success  or  failure  is  possible  without  first  of  all  a 
full  comprehension  of  what  they  had  to  begin  with. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE    BEGINNING 

THE  National  Advisory  Committee  on  Aero- 
nautics had  been  created  by  Congress  in  1915  and, 
though  chiefly  charged  with  scientific  and  technical 
phases  of  the  general  development  of  aeronautics, 
it  began  in  the  latter  part  of  1916  to  collect  some 
data  regarding  military  aviation  potentialities. 
Soon  afterwards  the  Council  of  National  Defense, 
authorized  by  Congress  in  the  summer  of  1916, 
began  to  function  and  established  its  Advisory 
Commission  which  early  took  up  aerial  defense. 
Some  consideration  was  given  to  possible  locations 
for  flying  fields,  a  sort  of  survey  of  existing  aviation 
plants  was  made,  some  attempt  was  made  to  stim- 
ulate manufacturers'  interest  in  the  production  of 
aeroplanes  and  engines,  and  a  feeble  effort  was 
made  by  the  Signal  Corps  (which  despite  all  its 
efforts  had  received  but  the  scantiest  financial 
support  from  Congress)  to  bring  into  its  slender 
organization  some  experience  and  ability  drawn 
from  civil  lif e. 

14 


The  Beginning  15 

As  the  outcome  of  a  visit  of  the  National  Advi- 
sory Committee  to  Detroit  in  November,  1916, 
Sidney  D.  Waldon,  a  Detroit  manufacturer,  who 
had  been  keenly  interested  in  aviation  since  1910 
and  had  been  active  in  the  Aero  Club  of  that  city 
and  in  providing  for  aviation  training  in  the 
Michigan  National  Guard,  was  induced  to  apply 
for  admission  to  the  Signal  Corps.  He  did  not 
receive  his  commission  as  Captain  until  some  time 
in  February,  but  in  the  meantime  acted  as  a  civil- 
ian assistant. 

At  that  time  the  executive  offices  of  the  aviation 
section  of  the  Signal  Corps  occupied  a  few  rooms 
in  the  Anson  Mills  building  in  Washington. 
Capt.,  later  Brig.  Gen.,  William  Mitchell,  was  then 
Aviation  Executive  Assistant  to  Lt.  Col.  Geo.  O. 
Squier,  later  Major  General,  chief  of  the  Signal 
Corps;  Maj.,  later  Brig.  Gen.,  B.  D.  Foulois  was 
in  charge  of  the  first  aero  squadron  at  San  Antonio, 
Tex.,  Capt.  De  Witt  Milling  was  in  charge  of 
engineering;  Capt.  Virginius  E.  Clarke,  later  Lieu- 
tenant Colonel,  was  assigned  to  engine  design 
and  W.  H.  H.  Hutton,  later  Colonel,  looked 
after  the  records  of  production.  There  were  then 
only  two  flying  fields  controlled  by  the  Signal 
Corps,  there  were  only  28  officers  and  1106  men 
in  the  enlisted  and  civil  personnel.  As  stated 


16  Wings  of  War 

above,  there  were  less  than  a  hundred  serviceable 
machines  of  any  kind  and  as  late  as  January  i, 
1917,  the  total  number  of  machines  that  had  been 
made  for  the  army  from  the  beginning  of  the  air 
service  was  only  118. 

In  view  of  the  imminence  of  the  peril  that  then 
confronted  the  nation,  it  is  almost  pathetic  to  read 
of  Howard  Coffin — then  a  member  of  the  Council  of 
National  Defense  (Advisory  Commission),  who  was 
devoting  special  attention  to  aeronautical  matters 
and  had  made  a  preparedness  industrial  survey  of 
the  country  for  Secretary  Daniels  of  the  Navy — 
and  S.  D.  Waldon  making  trips  to  inspect  the  few 
aircraft  factories  of  the  country,  encouraging  the 
aeronautical  exposition  in  New  York  and  scratch- 
ing on  the  surface  of  the  towering  mountain  of 
difficulties  and  tasks  that  were  to  be  overcome. 
One  of  these  early  tasks  was  the  working  out  of  a 
plan  whereby  patent  monopolies  would  not  inter- 
fere with  a  general  national  effort  in  case  of  need. 
About  the  first  order  given  at  this  time  to  stimu- 
late production  was  one  to  the  General  Vehicle 
Company  for  one  hundred  Gnome  engines,  half  for 
the  army  and  half  for  the  navy,  at  a  price  of  #5000 
apiece. 

As  showing  how  trivial  were  American  official 
aviation  efforts,  Mr.  Waldon  relates  that  on  in- 


The  Beginning  17 

vestigation  of  the  records  he  found  that  from  1908 
to  1916  the  army  had  ordered  59  'planes  and  re- 
ceived 54  and  that  during  1916  it  ordered  366 
and  received  64 — so  that  three  months  before  the 
United  States  plunged  into  a  war,  every  report  of 
which  for  more  than  two  years  had  told  of  the 
vital  importance  of  airplanes  to  its  successful 
waging,  the  army  had  received  altogether  only  1 18 
machines,  of  which  many  had  been  destroyed  or 
were  obsolete.  The  original  54  'planes  came  from 
four  makers — and  the  largest  number  awarded  to  a 
single  manufacturer  in  the  whole  eight  years  since 
the  Signal  Corps  had  taken  up  aviation  was  22.  It 
took  nine  factories  to  turn  out  the  64  machines 
that  were  tardily  delivered  to  the  army  during  1916. 
This  was  the  kind  of  support  the  United  States  gave 
to  the  building-up  of  an  industry  which  was  really 
as  vital  to  national  defense  as  the  army  and  navy. 
It  was  not  until  1914  that  Congress  became  lib- 
eral enough  to  appropriate  #300,000  for  the  pur- 
chase of  airplanes.  It  was  in  the  same  year  that 
five  officers  were  sent  to  the  Massachusetts  Insti- 
tute of  Technology  for  a  special  course  in  aero- 
nautics. These  five  men  were  the  regular  army 
technically  trained  personnel  with  which  to  face 
one  of  the  greatest  engineering  tasks  ever  imposed 
upon  any  body  of  men. 


i8  Wings  of  War 

The  situation  improved  little  with  the  certain 
approach  of  war  and  was  no  better  for  a  month 
after  we  declared  war,  except  that  there  had  been 
a  rapidly  developing  dismay  that  was  to  be  the 
father  of  enterprise  and  that  there  was  a  daily 
expanding  understanding  of  how  much  must  be 
done.  As  late  as  May  12,  1917,  the  outstanding 
orders  for  'planes  for  both  the  army  and  navy  were 
as  small  as  334,  a  number  which  was  later  to  be 
exceeded  by  the  weekly  production  schedule  of  a 
single  company. 

These  orders  were  distributed  between  sixteen 
actual  or  so-called  manufacturers,  and  the  fact 
that  most  of  them  were  never  filled  illustrates  how 
large  a  proportion  the  latter  constituted.  The 
orders  covered  ten  distinct  types  and  thirty-two 
different  designs,  each  manufacturer  being  per- 
mitted to  produce  about  what  his  yearnings  or  his 
ingenuity  suggested.  The  Curtiss  Company — 
then  the  only  aeroplane  manufacturing  concern  in 
the  country  of  important  capacity — led  with  or- 
ders for  126  and  their  53  R-4's  were  the  largest 
number  of  any  one  design,  and  the  largest  number 
of  any  one  type  was  116  twin-engine  hydroplanes. 
There  were  72  training  'planes  of  eight  different 
types;  85  were  land  reconnaissance  machines  of 
four  designs ;  26  were  seaplanes  of  four  designs ;  two 


The  Beginning  19 

were  bombers  of  the  pusher  type  and  there  were 
31  pursuit  'planes  of  seven  different  designs. 

The  many  different  types,  the  few  contractors, 
and  the  limited  number  of  contracts  reveal  pain- 
fully that  we  had  no  program,  no  funds,  and  but  a 
limited  comprehension  of  what  was  necessary.  Of 
the  contractors  only  one — the  Curtiss  Company — 
was  large,  as  an  all  around  airplane  manufacturing 
company — and  the  rest  were  either  motor  makers 
only,  adjuncts,  or  feeble  in  resources  or  personnel 
and  generally  lacking  in  the  organization  and  under- 
standing of  quantity  production.  Their  value  con- 
sisted more  in  their  engineers  than  in  their  realized 
production  ability.  The  list  of  these  contractors 
is  deserving  of  publication  and  record,  for  most  of 
them  subsequently  played  a  great  part  in  the  engi- 
neering or  production  sides  of  the  stupendous 
building  program  that  was  finally  embarked  upon. 
They  were  the  Curtiss,  the  Standard,  the  Burgess, 
the  L.  W.  F.,  Thomas-Morse,  Wright-Martin, 
Sturtevant,  Aero-Marine,  Gallaudet,  General  Ve- 
hicle, Pacific,  Christofferson,  Heinrich,  New  York 
Aero,  Pigeon  Frazer,  James  V.  Martin.  Compe- 
tent authority  states  that  the  first  six  in  the  list 
were  the  only  ones  that  had  ever  built  more  than 
ten  machines.  That,  perhaps,  is  a  sufficient  answer 
to  the  question  so  often  asked :  Why  did  automo- 


20  Wings  of  War 

bile  and  other  manufacturers  who  were  not  pre- 
viously in  the  business  of  making  aircraft  have  so 
much  to  do  with  the  production  program? 

The  domestic  manufacturers  or  would-be  manu- 
facturers were  profuse  in  their  advice  and  sugges- 
tions, each  believing  in  his  particular  aeroplane  or 
engine  or  whatever  else  he  had  to  offer  and  each 
eager  to  win  distinction  and  to  contribute  to  the 
success  of  the  war.  After  and  with  them  swarmed 
the  representatives  of  foreign  manufacturers  who 
were  anxious  to  dispose  of  their  American  rights 
and  sometimes  to  establish  American  plants. 
Their  offers  ran  into  very  high  figures.  The 
royalties  asked  by  some  of  them,  reduced  to 
a  basis  of  one  thousand  units  for  each,  are  as 
follows : 


Short  seaplane $   675,000.00 

Sopwith  'plane 500,000.00 

Clerget  engine 700,000.00 

Sunbeam  (including  cost  of  en- 
gine and  royalty) — 200  H.  P.  .   7,000,000.00 
300  H.  P..   8,000,000.00 

Caproni  rights 2,000,000.00 

Gnome 1,215,000.00 

Gnome,  100  H.  P 500,000.00 

Le  Rhone,  80  H.  P 1,375,000.00 

Handley-Page  'plane 200,000.00 

Le  Rhone  engine 600,000.00 


The  Beginning  21 

These  offers  and  the  support  advanced  for  each 
of  them  added  to  the  bewilderment  of  the  aircraft 
officials  and  to  the  great  body  of  criticism  that 
began  to  engulf  them.  Each  representative  whose 
proposition  was  not  promptly  accepted  or  was 
eventually  rejected  could  demonstrate  how  the  air- 
craft organization  was  thereby  failing  to  measure 
up  to  its  opportunities  and  responsibilities.  This 
was  also  true  of  some  of  the  domestic  manufac- 
turers, though  of  the  latter  it  must  be  said  that  in 
the  end,  whether  they  considered  that  they  had 
been  justly  and  understandingly  dealt  with  or  not, 
they  loyally  undertook  the  task  that  was  assigned 
to  them  whether  great  or  small.  Nor  can  it  be 
asserted  confidently  that  they  all  received  their 
deserts.  Mistakes  may  have  been  made,  doubt- 
less were  made.  It  could  not  be  otherwise.  Deci- 
sions, right  or  wrong,  had  to  be  made  or  the  early 
confusion  and  indecision  would  have  continued 
indefinitely.  The  odds  were  all  in  favor  of  follow- 
ing foreign  practice,  both  in  'planes  and  engines — 
so  far  as  combat  airplanes  were  concerned. 


CHAPTER  IV 

MAKING  UP  FOR  LOST  TIME 

THE  declaration  of  war  precipitated  an  in- 
describable state  of  confusion  in  Washington.  A 
government  whose  energies  had  been  largely 
devoted  to  keeping  out  of  war  and  defending  the 
rights  of  neutrals  and  whose  inclinations  were  all 
for  peace  found  itself  confronted  by  war — modern 
war,  of  which  it  was  all  but  totally  ignorant.  In 
striving  for  peace  it  had  failed  to  prepare  for  war. 
There  is  probably  no  parallel  in  history  of  a  great 
nation  remaining  for  three  years  on  the  edge  of  a 
war  that  involved  its  own  future,  reminded  daily 
of  the  huge  scale  of  operations  and  their  infinite 
complexity,  and  yet  doing  almost  nothing  to  arm 
itself.  The  small  aviation  organization  of  the  Signal 
Corps  was  stunned.  In  the  preceding  months  it 
had  gradually  grasped  the  idea  that  if  war  came  a 
prodigious  program  would  be  inevitable,  but  the 
preparations  for  realizing  and  preparing  for  it  were 
very  meager.  It  called  for  help.  In  response  the 


Making  Up  for  Lost  Time       23 

Council  of  National  Defense,  which  had  for  some 
months  concerned  itself  with  the  impending  prob- 
lem, created  the  Aircraft  Production  Board,  which 
thereafter  became  an  independent  body. 

Like  the  body  whence  it  sprang  it  had  no  real 
powers.  It  sought  to  counsel,  suggest,  and  advise; 
and  to  coordinate  and  harmonize  the  aviation 
efforts  of  the  army  and  the  navy.  Howard  E. 
Coffin,  an  automobile  manufacturer  of  great  abil- 
ity, industry,  and  self-sacrificing  patriotism,  who 
had  long  been  interested  in  preparedness  and  in 
the  development  of  aviation  as  an  arm  of  the 
national  military  power,  was  made  chairman.  The 
other  civilian  members  were  Edward  A.  Deeds, 
who  was  subsequently  to  assume,  as  chief  of  the 
equipment  section  of  the  aviation  division  of  the 
Signal  Corps,  the  task  of  directing  program  and 
production;  Sidney  D.  Waldon  and  Robert  L. 
Montgomery.  The  other  members  were  Gen. 
George  O.  Squier,  Chief  Signal  Officer,  and  Adm. 
D.  W.  Taylor,  Chief  of  the  Bureau  of  Construc- 
tion and  Repair  of  the  Navy. 

Congress  was  blindly  called  upon  for  huge  appro- 
priations and  blindly  made  them.  The  Allies, 
aware  of  the  tremendous  American  capacity  for 
quantity  production  and  knowing  from  their  own 
experience  of  the  many  obstacles  in  the  way  of 


24  Wings  of  War 

such  production,  and  being  keenly  convinced  of  the 
importance  of  supremacy  in  aerial  warfare,  advised 
that  we  undertake  an  aerial  program  that  would 
dwarf  all  that  had  been  done  by  themselves  or  the 
Germans.  The  popular  imagination  was  capti- 
vated by  the  concept  of  illimitable  American  manu- 
facturing potentiality  turned  to  the  conquest  of 
the  air.  On  May  I2th,  #10,800,000  was  voted;  on 
June  1 5th,  #31,  846,000,  and  finally  on  July  24th, 
after  the  army  air  program  had  been  decided  upon, 
#640,000,000.  Later  appropriations  in  this  and 
the  following  year  made  the  grand  total  for  the 
air  service,  #1,676,000,000,  which  was  cut  to 
#1,190,000,000  after  hostilities  ceased. 

General  Squier  asked  for  the  #640,000,000  more 
on  general  principles  than  as  the  result  of  careful 
calculation.  He  knew  that  the  cost  of  the  aviation 
enterprise,  if  conducted  on  an  adequate  scale,  would 
be  prodigious.  But  neither  he  nor  anyone  else 
knew  at  that  time  what  an  adequate  scale  was. 
Asked  by  one  of  his  officers  about  this  time  con- 
cerning the  program,  the  General  replied  that  there 
was  no  program  then  and  could  not  be  one. 

"Think  of  the  largest  program  you  can  imagine 
as  possible,"  he  said  in  effect,  "and  then  double 
it — and  probably  you  will  not  have  it  large 
enough." 


Making  Up  for  Lost  Time       25 

General  Squier  is  a  scientist  and  scholar  rather 
than  an  executive,  but  he  is  entitled  to  credit  for 
two  policies  that  profoundly  affected  production  of 
aviation  equipment  and  the  size  of  preparations  as 
well  as  their  manner  of  realization.  He  had  been 
abroad  and  had  a  wide  understanding  of  the  neces- 
sity for  extensive  preparations.  He,  therefore, 
opposed  all  half-way  measures.  He  was  for  plung- 
ing and  plunging  hard.  He  also  gave  his  executive 
heads  unlimited  authority,  thus  enabling  them  to 
act  with  promptness  and  vigor.  The  Signal  Corps 
administration  of  aviation,  therefore,  lacked  nei- 
ther vision  nor  initiative.  Whatever  criticism  may 
be  leveled  at  it,  credit  must  be  given  to  it  for  acting 
energetically  and  comprehensively. 

The  will  to  great  things  was  in  existence  and 
the  money  was  quickly  provided,  as  it  seems  now, 
though  to  an  impatient  country  the  time  seemed 
long  then.  But  at  first  the  aircraft  authorities  were 
like  a  man  on  a  desert  island  with  a  barrel  of  gold. 
They  did  not  know  how  to  exchange  their  funds 
for  aircraft. 

In  January  and  February  officers  of  the  Signal 
Corps  had  talked  about  the  possibility  of  building 
1000  'planes  in  1917  or  in  twelve  months,  but  in 
the  view  of  past  experience  with  aircraft  manu- 
facturers, nobody  believed  it  could  be  done.  On 


26  Wings  of  War 

March  23,  Capt.  V.  E.  Clarke  prepared  a  report 
that  looked  to  the  production  of  2500  'planes  a 
year.  By  the  middle  of  April  a  three-year  program 
was  beginning  to  take  form  requiring  the  produc- 
tion of  3700  'planes  within  the  first  twelve  months 
but  it  was  never  approved  by  higher  authority 
than  General  Squier.  About  the  same  time  Mr. 
Waldon,  who  as  a  manufacturer  was  anxious  to 
know  what  the  program  ought  to  be,  got  from 
Colonel  Bennett,  who  was  then  head  of  the  aviation 
section  of  the  Signal  Corps,  an  estimate  based  on 
an  army  of  one  million  which  called  for  thirty-six 
aero  squadrons  and  1296  military  machines.  Ten 
training  schools,  it  was  calculated,  would  require 
334  machines  at  the  start  and  500  during  the 
second  six  months  to  make  good  the  wastage — 
or  in  all  834  training  machines.  On  May  I4th  Mr. 
Waldon  made  an  estimate  of  5158  machines  for  the 
ensuing  fiscal  year.  On  May  23d  the  Joint  Army 
and  Navy  Technical  Board  raised  this  estimate  to 
7775  machines  of  which  7050  would  be  service 
machines,  and  the  rest  for  training.  But  on  May 
24th  the  French  Government  called  on  the  United 
States  to  undertake  a  program  that  would  put  4500 
machines  at  the  front  in  the  spring  of  1918.  The 
Army  and  Navy  Technical  Board,  acting  on  this 
advice,  then  calculated  that  such  an  objective 


o 

41 

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£ 

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I 

o 


Making  Up  for  Lost  Time       27 

would  call  for  about  22,500  airplanes  of  which 
10,000  would  be  for  training  purposes  and  12,000 
for  service.  This,  then,  was  the  program  to  be 
carried  out  in  less  than  a  year  by  an  army  that  had 
only  334  'planes  on  order  and  did  not  have  more 
than  two  dozen  capable  flyers  on  its  rolls,  and  in  a 
country  that  had  produced  only  320  aircraft  of  all 
kinds  and  on  all  orders,  foreign  and  domestic,  in 
the  first  six  months  of  1917. 

How  amateurish  the  earlier  estimates  had  been 
is  shown  by  the  fact  that  whereas  Colonel  Bennett 
had  figured  on  more  service  than  training  'planes,  the 
Technical  Board  at  first  calculated  on  ten  times  as 
many  training  as  service  'planes  and  finally  decided 
to  make  them  about  equal.  The  estimates  for  the 
navy  and  for  training  foreign  flyers  brought  the 
total  program  up  to  22,600  plus  requirements  for 
replacements  and  wastage.  At  the  most  this  was 
a  twelve-month  program. 

This  program  was,  of  course,  physically  impos- 
sible, but  in  those  days  impossibility  was  not 
admitted  in  connection  with  anything  that  the  war 
demanded.  The  men  at  the  head  of  aviation 
affairs  believed  it  could  be  done,  and  the  manu- 
facturers believed  likewise. 

The  civilian  members  of  the  Aircraft  Production 
Board,  being  men  of  large  affairs  and  wide  manu- 


28  Wings  of  War 

factoring  experience,  were  irked  by  their  lack  of 
power  and  irritated  by  the  inability  of  the  army  to 
cope  with  such  a  great  planning  and  production 
problem.  On  the  other  hand  the  army  men,  who 
were  doing  the  best  they  could,  retorted  that  it  was 
easy  to  advise  but  hard  to  do.  The  upshot  was 
that  Mr.  Deeds,  yielding  to  the  urging  of  General 
Squier,  accepted  the  chiefship  of  the  equipment 
division  of  the  Signal  Corps,  which  was  created  on 
on  Aug.  2,  1918,  and  was  soon  thereafter  made  a 
Colonel  in  the  regular  army.  The  scope  of  the  office 
included  both  engineering  and  production  for  all 
the  requirements  of  the  Signal  Corps,  aviation  as 
well  as  other.  A  finance  and  supply  division, 
already  in  existence,  was  reorganized  and  Mr. 
Montgomery,  subsequently  commissioned  as  a 
Colonel,  was  placed  at  its  head.  Mr.  Waldon, 
also  commissioned  as  a  Colonel,  was  chosen  by 
Colonel  Deeds  as  his  assistant  chief.  The  two 
divisions  were  united  a  little  later  with  Colonel 
Deeds  at  the  head. 

Congress  later  replaced  the  Aircraft  Production 
Board,  created  by  the  Council  of  National  Defense, 
with  the  Aircraft  Board,  and  on  October  22d 
General  Squier  and  Colonels  Deeds  and  Mont- 
gomery became  the  army  members  thereof  (Colo- 
nel Waldon  having  gone  to  France) ;  and  Admiral 


Making  Up  for  Lost  Time       29 

Taylor,  Captain  Irwin.and  Lieutenant  Commander 
Atkins  the  naval  members.  Richard  Howe  and  L. 
R.  Thayer  were  added  as  civilian  members,  and 
Howard  E.  Coffin  continued  as  chairman. 

Thus  were  established  the  bases  of  the  organi- 
zation of  aircraft  production,  civilians  in  army 
uniform  taking  up  the  stupendous  task.  In 
January,  1918,  Colonel  Deeds  was  transferred  to 
General  Squier's  office  with  the  still  larger  duties 
of  Industrial  Executive. 

Colonel  Deeds  as  chief  of  the  Equipment  Divi- 
sion and  later  as  industrial  executive  was  the 
responsible  head  of  army  aircraft  production.  He 
had  been  called  to  Washington  by  Mr.  Coffin  a 
month  before  war  was  declared  and  appointed 
by  Secretary  of  War  Baker  to  the  short-lived 
Munitions  Standard  Board.  Two  days  before  the 
declaration  of  war  Mr.  Coffin  again  called  on  Mr. 
Deeds  for  assistance  in  aviation  matters  and  on 
May  loth  invited  him  to  become  a  member  of  the 
Aircraft  Production  Board.  This  selection  was  a 
judicious  one  as  Mr.  Deeds  was  a  man  of  national 
reputation  as  a  successful  manufacturer  and  engi- 
neer, and  had,  as  the  friend  and  fellow-townsman 
at  Dayton  of  the  Wright  brothers,  been  long  inter- 
ested in  aviation  and  had  been  associated  with 
Orville  Wright  in  aeronautical  experimentation. 


30  Wings  of  War 

He  was  widely  known  as  an  excellent  executive 
and  an  acknowledged  master  of  quantity  pro- 
duction— and  quantity  production  was  what  the 
United  States  was  expected  to  realize  in  the  man- 
ufacture of  aircraft.  Another  special  qualifica- 
tion that  peculiarly  fitted  Colonel  Deeds  for  this 
work  was  that  he  had  had  a  very  exceptional 
experience  in  the  developing  of  new  highly  tech- 
nical apparatus  and  thereafter  putting  it  success- 
fully into  quantity  production,  and  it  was  well 
understood  that  the  work  of  producing  aircraft  in 
this  country  would  especially  demand  such  quali- 
fications. Europe  had  not  succeeded  in  realizing 
mass  production  by  machine  methods  but  it 
was  hoped  that  America,  the  acknowledged  home 
of  such  methods  and  of  standardization  and  ma- 
chine tools,  would  be  able  to  do  what  the  old 
world  had  failed  to  do.  Indeed,  it  was  well  under- 
stood among  American  industrialists  and  mechan- 
ical engineers  that  if  we  succeeded  at  all  in  attain- 
ing volume  in  aircraft  production  it  would  have  to 
be  by  our  characteristic  methods  of  manufacture. 
Colonel  Deeds,  as  chief  of  the  Equipment 
Division  of  the  Signal  Corps,  summoned  to  his 
assistance  the  following  men  of  affairs,  believing 
that  as  his  job  was  in  its  simple  outlines  a  big 
manufacturing  job,  men  who  had  done  big  things 


Making  Up  for  Lost  Time       31 

in  the  business  world  were  the  ones  to  fill  the 
positions. 

Sidney  D.  Waldon,  later  Colonel,  active  in  the 
Signal  Corps  aviation  section  since  November, 
1916,  formerly  vice-president  and  general  manager 
of  the  Packard  Motor  Car  Company,  afterward 
associated  with  the  Cadillac  Motor  Car  Company, 
and  later  acting  in  an  independent  consulting 

capacity  as  an  automobile  engineer  and  executive, 

% 

was  made  assistant  chief. 

R.  L.  Montgomery,  later  Colonel,  a  banker  of 
experience  in  Philadelphia  and  New  York,  was 
made  chief  of  finance. 

Melville  W.  Thompson,  later  Lieutenant  Col- 
onel, an  expert  accountant  and  valuator,  of  New 
York  City,  was  appointed  assistant  chief  of  finance. 

George  W.  Mixter,  later  Lieutenant  Colonel, 
vice-president  and  manager  of  manufacture  of 
Deere  &  Company,  a  manufacturer  of  broad  expe- 
rience, who  was  placed  in  charge  of  all  inspection. 

J.  G.  Vincent,  later  Lieutenant  Colonel,  vice- 
president  Packard  Motor  Car  Company,  chief  of 
engine  design. 

Harry  L.  Shepler,  later  Major,  production  man- 
ager of  the  Willys-Overland  Company,  chief  of 
'plane  production. 

Leonard  S.  Horner,  later  Lieutenant  Colonel, 


32  Wings  of  War 

general  manager  of  the  Acme  Wire  Company,  of 
New  Haven,  chief  of  production  of  instruments 
and  ordnance.  Later  he  became  the  efficient  ex- 
ecutive officer  of  the  Bureau  of  Aircraft  Production. 

W.  H.  H.  Hutton,  Jr.,  later  Colonel,  formerly 
associated  with  the  Timken  Company. 

Lieutenant  Harold  H.  Emmons,  U.  S.  N.  R.  F., 
in  civil  life  an  attorney  and  manufacturer  of 
Detroit,  as  chief  of  engine  production,  "loaned" 
to  the  army  by  the  navy. 

Each  of  these  heads  of  sections  chose  his  own 
sub-executive  from  among  the  business  men  and 
manufacturers  of  his  acquaintance  and  confidence, 
thus  creating,  as  well  as  could  be  done  in  so  short 
a  time,  the  counterpart  of  the  executive  organiza- 
tion of  a  great  manufacturing  business  in  which  the 
members  are  bound  together  in  an  efficient  whole 
by  mutual  esteem,  personal  acquaintance,  confi- 
dence, and  even  personal  friendship. 


CHAPTER  V 

SEEKING   GUIDANCE 

IP  the  men  who  were  groping  in  the  dark  to  find 
some  solid  foundations  on  which  to  plan  and  build 
in  the  early  days  of  the  war  were  frank  to  confess 
their  lack  of  knowledge  of  aeronautics  and  air- 
craft, the  country  at  large  was  full  of  well-meaning 
men  who  knew  precisely  what  should  be  done  and 
how  it  should  be  done.  Inventors,  dreamers, 
aeronautical  enthusiasts,  business  men  without 
expert  knowledge,  promoters  without  capital,  man- 
ufacturers without  factories,  and  plain  patriots  who 
wanted  to  help,  descended  in  droves  on  the  impo- 
tent Aircraft  Production  Board  and  upon  the 
Signal  Corps.  The  height  of  manufacturing  ab- 
surdity was  reached  by  a  thrifty  patriot  who 
offered  to  dispose  of  a  perfectly  good  clam-shell 
dredging  outfit  as  the  nucleus  of  a  plant  to  make 
Nieuport  pursuit  'planes.  These  self-constituted 
advisors  consumed  hours  and  days  of  time  of  many 
officials  and  afterward  elected  themselves  all 

3  33 


34  Wings  of  War 

around  critics  and  censors  of  all  aircraft  matters. 
The  whole  air  organization  was  like  a  town  meet- 
ing dealing  with  an  abstruse  problem  in  municipal 
finances.  Everybody  was  keen  and  eager  and  will- 
ing to  work  but  nobody  precisely  knew  what  to  do. 
There  were  many  ideas,  many  suggestions,  much 
advice  and  few  plans.  It  could  not  be  otherwise. 
Upon  a  small  body  of  men  inexperienced  in  this 
particular  field  was  thrown  the  overwhelming  re- 
sponsibility of  doing  in  an  impossibly  short  time 
far  more  than  had  been  done  by  the  best  technic- 
ians and  the  most  experienced  makers  of  aircraft 
in  other  countries  in  a  number  of  years.  Yet 
there  must  be  action  and  so  the  men  in  charge 
began  striking  out  in  the  dark  to  find  something 
solid  and  definite.  The  first  thing  they  did  was 
to  try  to  outline  the  task  after  the  Army  and 
Navy  Technical  Board  had  finally  decided  on 
a  program  calling  for  the  production  of  22,500 
machines,  and  their  quota  of  spare  parts, 
training  and  service.  This  is  what  confronted 
them: 

First :  The  manufacture  of  that  many  machines 
without  any  definite  knowledge  as  to  what  the 
different  types  should  be  and  without  any  real 
information  as  to  what  was  needed. 

Second :  The  establishment  of  a  comprehensive 


Seeking  Guidance  35 

system  of  training,  training  schools,  technical  in- 
struction and  training  fields. 

Third:  The  expansion  of  a  peace-time  organi- 
zation of  less  than  1500  persons  into  a  war-time 
organization  of  more  than  150,000. 

Fourth :  The  enlargement  of  the  aircraft  manu- 
facturing capacity  of  the  country  about  three  hun- 
dred times. 

Fifth:  The  creation  of  a  large  engineering  and 
technical  force  with  but  a  ridiculously  inadequate 
nucleus  with  which  to  start. 

Sixth :  The  ascertaining  of  the  materials  needed, 
arrangements  for  their  production,  and  the  crea- 
tion of  many  new  industries  to  supply  the  equip- 
ment of  the  'planes — all  the  way  from  dope  for 
the  wing-coverings  to  machine  guns. 

The  outlining  of  the  problem  only  served  to 
remind  how  helpless  the  country  was  with  respect 
to  the  knowledge  and  experience  needed  to  per- 
form each  part  of  it. 

Naturally,  the  first  thought  was  to  appeal  to  the 
Allies  for  advice  and  counsel.  So,  immediately 
after  the  declaration  of  war,  General  Squier, 
through  the  embassies,  cabled  to  Europe  asking 
that  aeronautical  experts  and  aviation  instructors 
be  sent  to  America.  Next  American  mechanics 
were  sent  abroad  to  learn  foreign  practice  in  manu- 


36  Wings  of  War 

facture.  Canada,  as  the  nearest  Ally,  was  ap- 
pealed to  for  advice  and  example  and  responded 
promptly.  Then  it  was  decided  to  send  a  com- 
mission abroad  to  learn  from  the  Allies  what  we 
might  and  should  do,  for  not  only  were  we  in  mil- 
itary aviation  as  little  children  compared  to  them, 
but  they  held  from  the  first  the  idea  that  the 
American  aviation  effort  should  not  be  a  perfect 
whole  but  should  be  considered  as  a  part  of  the 
Allied  aeronautical  unit. 

It  is  important  to  an  understanding  of  what  the 
United  States  later  did  or  did  not,  to  grasp  firmly 
the  fact  that  we  were  looked  upon  and  so  consid- 
ered ourselves  from  the  start,  as  the  complement 
of  the  Allies.  This  was  the  central  idea  and 
whether  it  was  sound  or  erroneous  is  now  imma- 
terial. The  point  is  that  our  aircraft  managers 
must  be  judged  by  what  they  did  in  accordance  with 
a  general  scheme  that  they  could  not  conceivably 
have  rejected  even  if  it  did  not  seem  to  them, 
as  well  as  to  our  Allies,  to  be  the  perfectly  evident 
course.  In  general  the  Allies  were  to  tell  us  what 
to  do  in  order  to  fill  out  the  common  program 
looking  to  control  of  the  air.  Thus  it  was  that 
the  French  determined  the  scale  of  our  effort,  and 
the  French  and  British  together  its  general  nature, 
and  French,  British,  and  Italians  acted  as  our 


Seeking  Guidance  37 

instructors.  It  is  true,  that  as  our  aircraft  mana- 
gers began  to  get  their  bearings,  they  departed 
somewhat  from  their  instructions  in  their  manner 
of  realizing  the  purpose,  but  throughout  they 
steadfastly  sought  to  supply  through  the  American 
aviation  effort  what  our  more  experienced  friends 
across  the  water  judged  we  should.  In  detail  this 
counsel  from  abroad  was  often  conflicting  and  con- 
sequently confusing.  While  many  and  competent 
experts  soon  came  across  the  ocean,  it  became 
evident  that  to  get  a  clearer  understanding  of 
what  was  required  of  us  and  also  a  more  complete 
knowledge  of  the  state  of  aeronautical  develop- 
ment in  Europe,  as  well  as  a  more  authoritative 
understanding  of  the  situation,  it  would  be  ne- 
cessary for  us  to  send  representatives  abroad  to  get 
in  touch  with  foreign  sources  of  policy  and  prac- 
tice and  also  with  our  own  military  commanders. 
The  Boiling  Commission,  as  it  was  known,  was 
accordingly  sent  abroad  about  the  middle  of  June, 
1917.  It  was  headed  by  Col.  R.  C.  Boiling,  who 
was  later  to  lose  his  life  heroically  in  a  revolver 
battle  with  German  officers  after  having  unwit- 
tingly entered  the  German  lines,  during  the  great 
German  offensive  of  March  and  April,  1918.  The 
army  members  were  Captain  Clarke  (later  Colo- 
nel), and  his  assistant,  Edgar  S.  Gorrell,  after- 


38  Wings  of  War 

ward  Colonel,  both  being  aeronautical  engineers 
of  the  then  existing  regular  aviation  organization; 
Commander  Westervelt  and  Lieutenant  Childs  of 
the  navy;  and  two  civilian  members,  viz.,  Howard 
Marmon,  engineer  of  the  Nordyke-Marmon  Com- 
pany of  Indianapolis  and  an  acknowledged  expert 
in  the  design  and  production  of  motors,  and 
Herbert  Hughes,  an  accomplished  engineer  of  the 
Packard  Company. 

In  the  meantime  the  work  of  locating  aviation 
fields,  expanding  the  service  personnel  and  creating 
the  training  organization  were  proceeding  rapidly, 
for  these  were  tasks  that  were  quickly  compre- 
hended in  their  outlines,  rendered  difficult  though 
they  were  by  lack  of  trained  aviators,  instructors, 
mechanics,  and  officers.  The  development  and 
expansion  of  these  branches  of  the  great  work  con- 
stitute a  vast  subject  in  themselves  and  will  herein 
be  considered  in  only  a  cursory  manner,  the  proper 
purpose  of  this  book  being  an  account  and  inter- 
pretation of  aircraft  production  in  America  during 
the  war. 


CHAPTER  VI 
TRAINING  'PLANES  AND  ENGINES 

THE  inevitable  confusion  and  uncertainty  that 
existed  in  the  early  stages  of  the  aircraft  effort 
were  quite  promptly  dissipated  in  regard  to  train- 
ing 'planes  and  engines.  It  was  obvious  that  they 
must  be  had  before  the  combat  equipment,  and 
in  large  numbers  at  an  early  date.  As  soon  as  the 
size  of  the  active  air  service  was  determined,  the 
approximate  requirements  for  training  became 
easily  calculable.  Moreover,  suitable  'planes  and 
engines  for  training  purposes,  at  least  in  the  earlier 
stages,  were  already  being  made  in  this  country. 
The  problem  did  involve  some  elements  of  choice 
but  mostly  it  was  a  problem  of  securing  quantity 
production  of  existing  types. 

The  Curtiss  Company  had  already  achieved  a 
very  considerable  output  of  training  airplanes, 
making  both  the  'plane  and  the  engine,  for  Canada, 
and  seaplanes  for  Britain;  the  Hall-Scott  engine 
was  being  produced  in  important  volume;  the 

39 


40  Wings  of  War 

Wright-Martin  Company  after  long  delay  had 
finally  swung  into  production  with  the  I5O-H.  P. 
Hispano-Suiza  and  the  General  Vehicle  was  put- 
ting out  about  five  lOO-H.  P.  Gnomes  daily.  Here 
were  definitely  proved  types  already  in  production. 
Also  the  Standard  Aero  Corporation  had  been 
developing  its  Standard  J  'plane  for  more  than  a 
year,  and  was  ready  to  proceed  with  production. 
While  the  Curtiss  'plane  and  engine  were  gener- 
ally considered  superior  to  the  Standard  'plane 
equipped  with  the  Hall-Scott  engine,  the  latter 
combination  was  recommended  by  the  Joint  Army 
and  Navy  Technical  Board  as  an  alternative.  It 
appeared  that  no  difficult  engineering  or  produc- 
tion problems  were  involved  in  these  decisions, 
though  it  did  later  develop  that  the  drawings  of 
both  machines,  owing  to  the  fact  that  they  had 
been  entirely  prepared  for  their  own  use  by  work- 
men who  were  familiar  with  them,  were  not  so 
complete  as  required  by  manufacturers  taking 
them  up  de  novo.  Thus,  although  other  plants 
were  brought  into  the  production  of  these  'planes 
and  engines  the  outcome  was  not  up  to  the  require- 
ments, the  peak  of  production  in  engines  being 
reached  in  March  instead  of  January,  1918. 

The  Willys-Morrow  plant  at  Elmira,   N.  Y., 
was  called  on  for  5000  of  the  0X5  engines,  the 


Training  'Planes  and  Engines    41 

Hall-Scott  Company  for  1250  of  its  Ay  A  engines, 
and  the  Nordyke-Marmon  Company  for  1000  of  tht 
same,  and  orders  for  the  corresponding  number  of 
'planes  and  spares  were  placed  with  various  manu- 
facturers as  follows :  Curtiss  Aeroplane  and  Motor 
Corporation,  Buffalo,  N.  Y.,  Engle  Aircraft  Com- 
pany, Niles ;  Fowler  Aircraft  Company,  San  Fran- 
cisco; Springfield  Aircraft  Company,  Springfield, 
Mass.,  and  St.  Louis  Car  Company,  St.  Louis, 
Curtiss  JN  'planes ;  Rubay  &  Company,  Cleveland ; 
Sturtevant  Company,  Boston ;  Remington  Aircraft 
Company,  Los  Angeles,  JN  spares ;  Standard  Aero- 
craft  Company,  Plainfield,  N.  J.  (afterwards  the 
Standard  Aircraft  Corporation  of  Elizabeth,  N.  J.) ; 
Dayton-Wright  Company,  Dayton,  Ohio;  Fisher 
Body  Corporation,  Detroit;  Glenn-Martin  Com- 
pany, Los  Angeles,  Standard  SJI  'planes. 

Had  it  not  been  for  the  difficulty  presented  by 
the  lack  of  complete  working  drawings,  other  large 
manufacturing  companies  that  had  not  hitherto 
made  aircraft  might  have  been  asked  to  assist,  but 
in  the  circumstances  it  was  considered  wise  to  give 
contracts  to  a  limited  number  of  companies  that 
had  some  knowledge,  experience,  or  understanding 
of  the  work  in  hand.  The  contracts  for  spare  parts 
were  given  to  companies  which  it  was  hoped  would 
later  develop  plants  capable  of  making  entire  ma- 


42  Wings  of  War 

chines.  This  indeed  was  the  general  policy  of  bring- 
ing American  manufacturers  of  other  experience 
into  the  aircraft  work;  that  is,  they  were  to  be 
started  on  parts  and  later  and  gradually  prepare 
themselves  for  complete  production  of  training 
'planes.  Those  who  did  well  on  training  'planes 
would  be  graduated  to  the  manufacture  of  service 
'planes.  This  policy  proved  very  successful ,  as  later 
developments  showed. 

The  difficulty  caused  by  lack  of  complete  draw- 
ings in  the  case  of  the  Curtiss  and  Standard  'planes 
serves  to  call  attention  to  the  fact  that  American 
manufacturers,  being  accustomed  to  absolutely 
standardized  production,  are  unable  speedily  to 
adapt  themselves  and  their  methods  to  the  man- 
ufacture of  any  new  article  unless  they  are  pro- 
vided with  drawings  that  are  complete  in  the 
minutest  detail.  The  European  manufacturer,  not 
being  so  completely  wedded  to  standardization  and 
machine  production,  can  begin  his  comparatively 
slower  production  sooner  after  taking  up  a  new 
thing.  This  elemental  difference  between  Amer- 
ican and  European  practice  was  the  occasion  of  a 
world  of  delay  in  the  quantity  reproduction  of 
European  designs  of  engines  and  'planes  in  this 
country,  and  constituted  one  of  the  arguments  for 
the  adoption  of  the  Liberty  motor  instead  of  some 


<? 

•O 


Training  'Planes  and  Engines    43 

approved  European  type.  It  is  hard  for  the  non- 
technical mind  to  understand  this,  but  its  compre- 
hension is  of  great  importance  because  of  its  bear- 
ing on  the  whole  question  of  the  transplantation 
of  the  aircraft  industry  from  Europe  to  America. 
Where  absolute  standardization  does  not  exist, 
drawings  that  are  complete  in  every  detail  are  not 
required,  as  the  intelligent  mechanic  fills  the  gaps, 
himself,  with  the  parts  of  necessary  size  as  he  meets 
them.  But  where  the  parts  are  all  machine  made 
and  standardized,  the  drawings  must  be  complete 
in  every  respect  else  the  machine  tools  that  make 
the  parts  cannot  be  prepared,  and  machine  tools, 
wonderful  as  they  are,  are  not  capable  of  mak- 
ing a  different  sized  part  of  the  same  general 
nature  to  fit  the  particular  opening  that  may 
have  been  left  for  it.  The  delays  and  difficul- 
ties of  this  kind  that  are  thus  brought  to  mind 
by  the  case  of  one  American  company  that 
had  developed  quantity  production  in  its  own 
shops  without  absolutely  complete  drawings  will 
be  mentioned  and  further  dwelt  upon  in  another 
chapter. 

While  there  has  been  much  criticism  of  the 
Standard  training  'plane  equipped  with  the  Hall- 
Scott  engine  and  it  was  at  a  later  period  abandoned 
by  the  Air  Service  when  it  had  readied  such  a 


44  Wings  of  War 

stage  of  sufficiency  of  equipment  that  it  could  be 
hypercritical  of  what  was  delivered  to  it  by  the 
production  department,  the  record  of  casualties 
in  American  training  fields  does  not  indicate  that 
its  choice  as  an  emergency  measure  was  not  wise. 
Neither  the  'plane  nor  the  engine  was  considered 
perfect,  but  it  was  known  that  they  would  meet 
the  purpose — and  they  did. 

The  advanced  training  program  called  for  the 
use  of  a  rotary  engine  which  would  train  the  stu- 
dent for  work  in  the  small,  swift  pursuit  'planes 
and  for  a  fixed-cylinder  type  of  engine  that  would 
familiarize  him  with  the  use  of  machines  of  greater 
speed  and  power.  The  IOO-H.  P.  Gnome  rotary 
was  being  made  in  small  quantities  by  the  General 
Vehicle  Company,  but  neither  the  Gnome  I5O-H.  P. 
rotary  nor  the  Le  Rhone  80  H.  P.  was  available, 
yet  the  recommendations  from  Europe  were  for 
the  production  of  5000  of  the  I5O-H.  P.  Gnome 
and  2500  of  the  8o-H.  P.  Le  Rhone.  As  so  many 
Gnomes  were  entirely  beyond  the  capacity  of  the 
General  Vehicle  Company  an  effort  was  made  to 
get  the  General  Motors  Company  to  cooperate 
with  the  General  Vehicle  Company  and  take  the 
burden  of  production  with  its  many  and  large 
plants,  having  the  advantage  of  the  General 
Vehicle  experience.  Before  this  arrangement  was 


Training  'Planes  and  Engines    45 

consummated   the  word   came  from   France  to 
abandon  the  I5O-H.  P.  Gnome. 

Meanwhile,  the  Union  Switch  and  Signal  Com- 
pany, of  Swissvale,  Pa.,  a  Westinghouse  subsidi- 
ary, was  persuaded  to  take  up  the  task  of  making 
2500  of  the  8o-H.  P.  Le  Rhone.  "  Persuaded  "  is 
the  word,  for  this  company,  like  most  of  the  other 
great  American  manufacturing  companies,  recog- 
nized fully  the  numerous  and  baffling  difficulties 
that  were  certain  to  be  encountered  in  producing  a 
machine  of  European  design  by  American  manu- 
facturing methods.  The  company's  reluctance  was 
well  justified  by  the  event,  for  even  though  a  com- 
plete engine  was  received  from  France  in  Sep- 
tember, the  drawings  that  accompanied  it  did  not 
agree  with  it  in  all  respects,  either  in  design  or 
dimensions,  nor  was  it  accompanied  by  complete  or 
accurate  drawings,  and  precise  specifications  and 
metallurgical  instructions.  These  may  seem  triv- 
ial matters,  but  it  took  months  to  revise  and  check 
the  drawings  and  then  still  more  time  to  prepare 
the  detail  drawings  necessary  for  standardized  pro- 
duction. Owing  to  the  inaccuracy  of  the  metallur- 
gical instructions  every  part  of  the  engine  had  to 
be  chemically  analyzed,  in  order  to  ascertain  its 
composition.  Finally  it  was  necessary  to  bring 
from  France  M.  Georges  Guillot,  the  engineer  of 


46  Wings  of  War 

the  Gnome-Le  Rhone  factories.  So  it  was  not 
until  May,  1918,  that  the -Union  Switch  and  Signal 
Company,  one  of  the  most  competent  manufac- 
turing corporations  in  America,  with  all  of  its  own 
great  engineering  ability  and  the  assistance  ex- 
tended to  it  by  M.  Guillot  and  the  engineers  of 
the  Signal  Corps,  was  able  to  begin  production. 
Associated  with  this  Le  Rhone  achievement  were 
Lieut.  Frank  M.  Hawley,  government  engineer 
in  charge,  and  Alex.  K.  Hamilton,  Pittsburgh, 
district  manager  of  engine  production,  and  his 
assistant,  Frank  C.  Moore.  It  should  be  remem- 
bered that  this  Le  Rhone  engine  is  a  small  affair 
of  only  80  H.  P.  That  so  much  difficulty  was 
encountered  in  getting  it  into  quantity  production 
of  a  comparatively  small  total  number  is  a  hint 
of  the  vastly  greater  and  more  widespread  involve- 
ments of  time  and  manufacturing  plants  that  would 
have  followed  the  reproduction  in  America  of  a  high- 
powered  foreign  engine  by  the  tens  of  thousands. 

This  is  an  appropriate  place  again  to  direct 
attention  to  the  fact  that  to  take  up  an  European 
design  even  of  the  most  accepted  and  proved  type 
and  undertake  its  quantity  production  in  America 
is  by  no  means  the  simple  thing  it  seems  when  sug- 
gested. It  is  far  more  than  a  parrot-like  imitation. 
Because  America  does  not  produce  by  hand  and 


Training  'Planes  and  Engines    47 

has  not  the  kind  of  mechanics  that  thus  build 
machines,  any  European  machine  that  is  brought 
here  for  manufacture  must  go  through  a  consid- 
erable period  of  adaptation  to  American  methods, 
whether  these  be  merely  multitudinous  and  tedious 
drawings  of  the  parts  and  the  tools,  jigs,  and  fix- 
tures to  make  them,  and  the  making  of  the  tools, 
or  of  actual  changes  in  the  detail  of  design  to  fit 
American  shop  practice.  The  fact  is  that  ordin- 
arily a  new  American  design,  can  be  put  into 
quantity  production  in  American  shops  sooner  than 
an  imported  design,  even  though  it  be  accom- 
panied by  a  completed  machine.  The  machine  and 
the  human  do  not  manufacture  in  the  same  way. 
Had  we  but  begun  to  naturalize  the  standard 
European  types  of  engines  and  'planes  in  this 
country  a  year  before  the  war,  even  if  we  had  not 
essayed  quantity  production,  there  would  have 
been  all  the  difference  in  the  world,  not  only  in  the 
prompt  and  voluminous  production  of  primary  and 
secondary  training  engines,  but  even  in  the  foreign 
combat  engines  and  'planes.  That  this  was  not 
done  is  not  the  fault  but  rather  the  grave  misfor- 
tune of  the  men  who  were  called  upon  to  do  every- 
thing years  too  late. 

The  story  is  the  same  with  the  Hispano-Suiza 
engine  which  was  chosen  as  the  power  plant  of  the 


48  Wings  of  War 

advanced  training  machines,  with  the  Curtiss  JN 
'plane.  The  Wright-Martin  Aircraft  Corporation 
had  acquired  the  American  rights  for  this  motor  in 
the  latter  part  of  1915  and  had  begun  work  on 
its  Americanization  in  January,  1916.  Yet  it  was 
February,  1917,  thirteen  months  later,  after  in- 
finite efforts  and  the  expenditure  of  millions  of 
dollars,  that  the  first  machine-tool  production 
machine  came  through.  The  Wright-Martin  Com- 
pany was  originally  working  on  a  contract  from 
the  French  Government,  but  at  an  early  date  a 
large  American  order  was  placed  with  it  for  150- 
H.  P.  Hispano-Suizas  for  advanced  training  and 
even,  as  was  thought  at  first,  for  combat  purposes, 
but  the  150  H.  P.  soon  fell  behind  the  procession 
of  military  aeronautical  advance  for  that  purpose. 

Including  451  Lawrence  engines,  the  manufac- 
turers of  engines  for  training  purposes  had  deliv- 
ered 16,134  up  to  the  signing  of  the  armistice 
(this  number  was  considerably  increased  before 
production  ceased),  of  which  about  500  went  to 
the  navy  directly,  about  300  to  the  A.  E.  F.,  and 
the  rest  were  incorporated  into  training  'planes  at 
home,  the  distribution  by  types  being  OX,  8458; 
Hispano-Suiza,  3549;  AyA,  2250;  Gnome,  280;  Le 
Rhone,  1298;  Lawrence,  451. 

These  experiences  with  the  Americanization  of 


Training  'Planes  and  Engines    49 

foreign  engines  showed  that  by  the  time  European 
types  could  be  brought  to  mass  production  here 
they  were  far  behind  European  development.  It 
requires  in  Europe  at  least  one  year  to  design  and 
develop  a  new  engine  to  the  point  of  determining 
its  value.  Another  year  is  required  to  attain  mass 
production  in  this  country.  So  the  original  design 
is  two  years  old  when  production  begins  here. 
Thus  the  loo-H.  P.  Gnome  and  the  I5O-H.  P.  His- 
pano  were  both  obsolete  for  service  use  by  the  time 
our  manufacturers  could  make  deliveries. 

In  getting  a  proper  perspective  on  the  aircraft 
production  effort  care  must  be  taken  to  give  due 
consideration  to  the  production  of  training  engines 
and  'planes.  The  public  attention  was  naturally 
concentrated  on  combat  'planes  and  the  engines 
that  went  with  them,  notably  the  Liberty  motor. 
The  public  was  paying  for  results  and  was  dis- 
posed to  overlook  the  laborious  toil,  the  many 
manufacturing  difficulties  and  the  time  required 
for  preparation  for  air  power.  The  fact  that  while 
combat  engines  and  'planes  were  being  designed 
and  produced,  a  great  manufacturing  feat  was  per- 
formed with  respect  to  the  training  apparatus  and 
equipment  is  and  was  entirely  overlooked.  The 
Liberty  motor,  the  De  Haviland  4,  the  great 
bombers,  the  big  seaplanes — all  these  were  spec- 


50  Wings  of  War 

tacular  and  appealed  to  the  public  imagination, 
just  as  soldiers  at  the  front  in  Prance  interested 
the  public  more  than  soldiers  tediously  drilling  in 
camps  at  home.  The  humble  training  'planes  and 
motors  without  which  the  fighting  airplanes  would 
never  be  utilizable  were  almost  forgotten.  While 
the  public  was  "fed  up"  with  accounts  of  delays 
and  disappointments  in  the  production  of  the 
fighting  aircraft  it  was  not  informed  that  the  man- 
ufacturers and  the  aviation  division  of  the  Signal 
Corps  were  making  a  marvelous  record  in  the  pro- 
duction of  training  apparatus.  The  production 
began  with  9  'planes  in  June,  1917,  and  gradu- 
ally increased  until  the  maximum  was  reached  in 
January,  1918,  with  an  output  of  729.  There- 
after, training  requirements  being  well  in  hand, 
the  output  slowly  decreased  until  it  fell  to  162  a 
month  just  after  the  armistice  was  signed.  Rough- 
ly, then,  it  may  be  said  that  within  the  first  year 
of  the  war,  notwithstanding  the  confusion  that 
inevitably  existed  at  first  and  that  led  to  some  loss 
of  time,  the  aircraft  managers  found  ways  to  pro- 
vide the  training  'planes  and  engines,  not  to  men- 
tion the  thousand  and  one  other  accessories  of 
training,  for  an  aviation  organization  of  more  than 
one  hundred  and  ninety  thousand  men  of  whom 
about  one- tenth  were  student  aviators. 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE  BOLLING  COMMISSION  AND  FOREIGN 
ASSISTANCE 

THE  Boiling  Commission,  whose  composition 
has  been  given  elsewhere,  was  sent  abroad  to 
secure  information  as  to  what  the  Allies  expected 
of  us,  how  we  should  proceed  to  carry  out  that 
advice,  to  confer  with  General  Pershing  and  his 
staff  in  regard  to  their  aviation  requirements,  and 
generally  determine  the  objectives  of  the  American 
aviation  effort. 

The  members  of  this  commission  soon  came  to 
a  clear  understanding  of  the  absolute  impossi- 
bility of  any  extensive  American  contribution  to 
the  numbers  of  service  machines  at  the  front  before 
the  summer  of  1918.  When  this  situation  was 
explained  by  them  to  General  Pershing,  it  was 
decided  to  procure  as  many  machines  from  foreign 
manufacturers  as  possible  both  for  service  and  for 
advanced  training  of  our  aviators  in  France,  it 
having  been  decided  that  advanced  training  un- 

51 


52  Wings  of  War 

der  the  circumstances  could  best  be  provided  in 
France. 

The  French  manufacturers  were  very  confident 
that  besides  supplying  all  of  the  needs  of  their  own 
army  they  could  within  a  year  provide  the  Amer- 
ican air  service  with  sixty-five  hundred  'planes  and 
about  eighty-five  hundred  service  engines,  besides 
about  a  thousand  training  'planes  with  their 
engines,  provided  that  they  could  be  supplied  with 
materials  from  the  United  States.  This  was  most 
encouraging  information,  for  it  seemed  to  promise 
fighting  machines  on  a  par  with  those  used  by  the 
Allies  much  sooner  than  anything  like  such  a  num- 
ber could  be  produced  in  the  United  States,  where 
the  service  machine  industry  was  non-existent. 
Such  a  course  pointed  to  the  quickest  possible 
route  to  American  aviation  representation  at  the 
front,  in  large  measure  relieved  American  manu- 
facturers from  the  necessity  of  making  the  pursuit 
machines,  and  left  them  free  to  concentrate  on 
the  high-powered  engines  and  larger  types  of 
'planes,  for  reconnoissance,  night  and  day  bomb- 
ing, etc.,  which  was  what  the  Allies  seemed  to 
expect  of  us.  Moreover,  as  the  fashions  in  pursuit 
'planes  changed  almost  daily,  it  was  felt  that  it 
was  an  ideal  arrangement  to  have  them  made 
almost  in  sight  of  the  battle  line  and  in  immediate 


The  Boiling  Commission        53 

communication  with  its  changing  requirements. 
The  European  system  of  manufacture  was,  too, 
especially  adapted  to  meeting  changes  during  the 
course  of  construction. 

Nor  did  it  appear  at  the  time  that  this  was 
imposing  an  unwelcome  and  onerous  burden  on 
the  French.  It  appeared,  on  the  contrary,  that 
the  capacity  of  their  factories  had  advanced  be- 
yond their  own  requirements  and  that  it  was  a 
piece  of  fine  inter- Allied  economy  to  use  their  faci- 
lities for  the  common  end.  Here,  however,  as  at 
home  there  was  to  be  a  disappointment  in  per- 
formance. The  more  experienced  French  manu- 
facturers were  as  overoptimistic  as  to  their  ability 
as  our  inexperienced  manufacturers  and  managers 
were.  According  to  the  schedule  all  the  machines 
were  to  be  completed  by  June,  1918,  and  the  rate 
of  production  was  to  go  as  high  as  eight  hun- 
dred in  January;  eleven  hundred  in  February; 
fourteen  hundred  in  March,  and  thence  decline. 
About  6000  airplanes  were  ordered  from  French 
manufacturers,  as  follows:  Nieuport  training, 
725;  Spad  training,  150;  Spad  service,  2000; 
Breguet  service,  1500;  New  Spad  or  Nieuport 
service,  1500.  Instead  of  the  6000  only  1299 
airplanes  were  actually  delivered  up  to  May  23, 
1918,  of  which  1 1 80  were  the  various  Nieuport 


54  Wings  of  War 

types;  in  addition  532  machines  of  various  types 
were  obtained  from  French  sources,  so  that  the 
A.  E.  F.  at  the  end  of  a  year  had  only  1832  ser- 
vice and  training  'planes,  instead  of  the  6000 
promised.  By  the  time  the  armistice  was  signed 
the  total  number  of  foreign  made  machines, 
including  some  English  and  Italian,  had  grown 
to  5071. 

The  failure  of  the  French  manufacturers  was 
due  partly  to  an  impossible  schedule,  partly  to  our 
failure  to  deliver  all  of  the  material  promptly,  but 
especially  to  the  increased  demands  of  the  French 
aviation  service,  which  even  led  to  the  diversion 
of  much  of  the  American  machinery  and  material 
in  the  manufacture  of  machines  for  the  French 
army.  On  the  whole,  though,  the  contract  to 
deliver  materials  was  very  well  carried  out  and 
constitutes  a  performance  that  is  greatly  to  the 
credit  of  the  aviation  executives,  considering  that 
it  was  undertaken  simultaneously  with  the  throes 
of  the  great  production  effort  in  America.  Some 
ten  million  dollars'  worth  of  an  almost  unlimited 
number  of  articles  or  commodities  were  collected 
and  shipped  through  the  agency  of  J.  G.  White 
&  Company,  of  New  York.  The  shipments 
included  five  million  feet  of  lumber,  one  thousand 
tons  of  machine  tools,  fifteen  thousand  tons  of 


French-Made  American  Spad  at  the  Front 


"The  Flying  Fish,"  a  Decorated  Nieuport  at  the  Front 

U.  S.  Air  Service  Photo 


The  Boiling  Commission        55 

materials  and  supplies  such  as  steel,  brass,  copper, 
and  aluminum  tubing;  steel,  copper,  lead,  and 
aluminum  sheets;  bar  steel,  tool  steel,  structural 
steel,  ball-bearings,  crank  shafts,  turn-buckles, 
radiator  tubes,  wire  cable,  bolts,  screws,  nails, 
fiber,  cloth,  felt,  and  rubber.  Moreover,  19,000 
mechanics  were  sent  to  France  and  England  and 
fabricated  parts  for  9000  engines  and  1800  'planes, 
besides  150,000,000  feet  of  airplane  lumber,  and 
more  than  30,000  tons  of  wood  chemicals. r 

1  The  following  summary  of  aviation  aid  furnished  by  the 
United  States  to  the  Allies  was  laid  before  the  House  of  Repre- 
sentatives Committee  on  Naval  Affairs  (aviation  hearings,  second 
session,  Sixty-sixth  Congress,  p.  1525): 

"Aid  Furnished  Allies  by  America. — Under  an  agreement  with 
France,  made  in  the  fall  of  1917,  France  was  to  furnish  certain 
airplanes  and  engines  to  the  American  army.  America  was  to 
furnish  certain  material  and  fabricated  parts  to  France.  How- 
ever, it  was  distinctly  agreed  that  France's  delivery  of  planes 
and  engines  was  not  dependent  upon  American  delivery  of  raw 
materials.  This  agreement  meant  the  delivery  of  23,000  tons  of 
material,  and  of  this  amount  46  per  cent,  had  been  delivered  by 
December  31,  1917,  84  per  cent,  by  March  31,  1918,  and  96  per 
cent,  by  June  30,  1918.  Included  in  these  deliveries  were  fabri- 
cated parts  sufficient  for  9000  engines  and  1800  planes.  In 
addition  to  this  the  American  army  delivered  to  the  Allies  150,- 
000,000  feet  of  airplane  lumber  and  over  30,000  tons  of  wood 
chemicals.  Prior  to  the  armistice  we  furnished  1422  Liberty 
engines  to  our  Allies.  We  furnished  to  the  British  15,000  me- 
chanics and  over  4000  to  France.  In  fact,  the  Allied  air  pro- 
grams of  the  various  countries  depended  absolutely  upon  the  help 
of  America.  The  aid  of  the  American  army  enabled  the  Allies  to 
produce  the  materials  they  furnished  us  and  placed  them  in  far 
better  position  to  supply  both  their  needs  and  ours  than  they  would 
have  been  to  supply  their  own  needs  alone  without  our  help. ' ' 


56  Wings  of  War 

It  was  not  until  December,  1917,  that  the  French 
indicated  that  they  would  have  to  default  on  their 
contract.  Though  America  had  not  provided  all 
the  materials  on  schedule  time,  the  chief  reason 
was  that  when  M.  Loucheur  became  the  French 
Minister  of  Munitions  he  decided  to  double  the 
French  aviation  production  program  and  notified 
the  A.  E.  F.  that  it  could  not  rely  upon  the  French 
contractors  carrying  out  their  contracts.  This 
change  in  the  French  program,  rather  than  lack 
of  materials,  was  the  true  reason  of  the  non-reali- 
zation of  the  general  scheme  of  having  the  Allies 
fully  supply  our  service  and  overseas  training 
'planes  until  the  middle  of  1918.  In  fact,  the  con- 
tracts provided  that  in  the  event  of  American 
materials  not  arriving  as  per  schedule  the  French 
would  draw  on  their  own  supplies  and  replace  them 
later  from  the  American  stocks.  The  practical 
canceling  of  the  French  contracts  was  serious 
from  the  American  point  of  view,  but  from  the 
standpoint  of  Allied  aircraft  success  considered  as 
a  unified  whole,  which  was  the  governing  principle 
of  American  cooperation,  it  was  not  such.  The 
American  individual  aerial  effort  during  the  war 
was  thereby  circumscribed,  but  the  French  effort 
was  correspondingly  extended  and  intensified. 

It  will  be  well  here  to  emphasize  the  fact  that 


The  Boiling  Commission        57 

the  underlying  conception  of  the  American  par- 
ticipation in  the  aerial  branch  of  the  war  was  that 
it  was  to  be  a  part  of  a  unified  whole.  We  were 
called  upon  to  do  what  we  could  best  do  to  con- 
tribute to  the  success  of  the  common  cause,  and 
the  Allies  were  to  do  likewise.  Thus  the  American 
program  was  never  a  symmetrical  whole  and  had 
to  be  altered  from  time  to  time  to  suit  the  chang- 
ing conditions  of  the  common  effort,  and  was  even 
more  important  as  a  common  source  of  mechanics, 
materials,  and  parts  than  as  a  contributor  of  a 
separate  military  face. 

One  of  the  things  required  of  the  Boiling  Com- 
mission was  that  besides  investigating  European 
types  of  engines  and  'planes  with  a  view  to  advis- 
ing regarding  their  manufacture  in  this  country 
it  should  procure  and  send  samples  of  different 
engines  and  'planes  as  soon  as  possible,  so  that  our 
engineers  would  have  models  from  which  to  make 
drawings  and  otherwise  prepare  for  production. 
This  seemed  a  thing  as  simple  and  as  easily  to  be 
performed  as  it  was  necessary.  But,  whatever  the 
cause,  these  samples,  even  when  procurable,  were 
very  long  in  reaching  America.  This  simple  failure 
serves  to  illustrate  the  difficulties  in  the  way  of 
putting  foreign  machines  into  production  in  Amer- 
ica. Six  types  of  engines  and  six  of  'planes,  the 


5«  Wings  of  War 

number  of  samples  of  each  varying  from  two  to 
eight,  were  asked  for  from  France;  three  types  of 
'planes  and  engines  from  Italy,  and  ten  from 
England,  ranging  from  two  to  sixteen  in  number 
of  samples.  Also  four  of  the  Lorraine-Dietrich 
engines  were  requested  from  France. 

The  first  sample  to  arrive  was  a  De  Haviland  4, 
which  reached  Washington,  July  27,  1917,  without 
engine,  ordnance,  or  any  of  the  other  accessories 
which  go  to  make  up  a  fighting  airplane.  The  last 
of  the  samples  did  not  arrive  until  the  following 
winter.  The  fact  that  we  had  been  at  war  four 
months  before  it  was  possible  to  get  the  first  sam- 
ple of  a  combat  machine  to  America  throws  a  great 
light  on  the  feeble  beginnings  with  which  the 
designers  and  makers  of  aircraft  had  to  start. 

It  seemed  a  simple  thing  to  say,  "Reproduce 
approved  foreign  designs  in  America,"  and  an 
obvious  thing  to  do.  But  it  was  maddening  to 
find  that  the  samples  were  incomplete  and  draw- 
ings insufficient.  If  at  the  start  complete  draw- 
ings of  European  engines  and  'planes  that  it  was 
desired  to  put  into  production  in  this  country  could 
have  been  secured,  the  output  of  service  'planes, 
at  least,  would  have  been  realized  on  a  large  scale 
several  months  before  it  was.  An  American  manu- 
facturer will  undertake  almost  any  feat  of  produc- 


The  Boiling  Commission        59 

tion  if  he  can  have  the  necessary  drawings  and 
blue  prints  complete  at  the  start.  They  are  the 
soul  of  machine-method  quantity  production. 

If  someone  had  had  the  foresight  to  study 
European  models  of  fighting  aircraft  and  prepare 
from  them  merely  one  complete  set  of  drawings  in 
the  year  preceding  our  entry  into  the  war,  we  could 
have  produced  chasse  machines  for  service  at  the 
front  sooner  than  the  aviators  could  have  been 
trained  to  use  them.  We  would  not  have  had  to 
rely  on  the  French  for  an  insufficient  number  of 
them,  and  at  the  same  time  our  development  and 
production  of  high-powered  engines  and  large  air- 
planes could  have  gone  on  unimpeded.  In  the 
same  way  the  production  of  the  larger  'planes 
would  have  been  greatly  expedited.  For  while, 
in  the  end,  we  came  to  rely  chiefly  on  the  Liberty 
motor,  which  was  not  conceived  until  the  latter 
part  of  May,  1918,  the  lack  of  accurate  drawings 
and  other  data  regarding  the  De  Haviland  as  well 
as  the  big  night-bombing  'planes  greatly  delayed 
their  production. 

A  scrap  of  paper  is  a  little  thing.  The  war  in 
Europe  began  with  the  tearing  up  of  one.  A  few 
scraps  with  drawings  on  them  filed  in  a  few  pigeon- 
holes in  Washington  might  have  ended  the  war 
six  months  sooner. 


60  Wings  of  War 

Without  going  into  detail  as  to  the  recommen- 
dations of  the  Boiling  Commission,  it  may  be  said 
that  its  recommendations  and  those  of  General 
Pershing  tended  toward  the  idea  that  the  business 
of  the  United  States  was  to  produce  aerial  engine 
power  in  great  volume  and  in  large  units,  both 
for  itself  and  for  the  Allies,  and  corresponding 
types  of  'planes.  It  is  important  to  grasp  this  fact 
fully.  It  explains  why  even  on  the  last  day  of  the 
war  there  was  not  a  single-seater  fighter  of  Ameri- 
can make  at  the  front.  There  were  none  there 
because  they  were  not  on  the  American  program. 

As  early  as  December  14,  1917,  General  Pershing 
cabled:  "United  States  should  leave  production 
single-place  fighter  to  Europe."  Prior  to  that 
elaborate  preparations  had  been  made  to  manu- 
facture the  Spad  in  this  country,  but  on  receipt  of 
this  cablegram  the  order  was  canceled.  Even 
before  this  time  the  trend  in  Europe  seemed  to 
be  away  from  the  single-seater  and  toward  the 
two-seater,  and  it  was  the  opinion  in  both  Paris 
and  London  in  January,  1918,  that  no  more  of  the 
former  would  be  ordered  after  July  by  either  France 
or  England.  Europe  felt  amply  able  to  supply 
itself  and  us  with  whatever  single-seaters  might  be 
needed,  and,  owing  to  proximity  to  the  front,  with 
a  quicker  appreciation  of  the  lessons  of  experience, 


The  Boiling  Commission        61 

better  than  we  could  possibly  do  it.  So,  we  repeat, 
we  made  no  single-seater  fighters  because  we  pur- 
posely left  them  off  our  program,  on  the  advice 
of  foreign  authorities  and  our  own  representatives 
abroad.  Our  general  plan,  then,  was : 

First:  Early  attainment  of  quantity  produc- 
tion of  two-place  machines  of  the  observation  type, 
such  as  the  De  Haviland  4  and  its  modifications. 

Second:  Follow  with  quantity  production  of 
two-place  machines  of  the  fighting  type,  such  as 
the  Bristol. 

Third :  Come  on  as  rapidly  as  possible  with  the 
great  bombing  machines  such  as  the  Handley-Page 
and  the  Caproni. 

Owing  to  its  great  speed,  when  equipped  with 
the  Liberty  motor  and  its  powerful  armament, 
the  De  Haviland  4  was  really  a  three-purpose 
'plane,  viz.,  observation,  bombing,  and  defensive 
fighting. 

"The  decision  not  to  proceed  with  the  single- 
seater  type  of  fighting  machine  (i.  e.  the  Spad)," 
says  an  official  statement,  recently  issued,  "was 
undoubtedly  based  on  the  conclusion  reached  in 
the  fall  of  1917  that  the  era  of  independent  fight- 
ing was  almost  gone.  Flying  and  fighting  in 
formation  offered  marked  advantages.  There 
are  no  blind  spots  in  a  formation  of  fighters, 


62  Wings  of  War 

each  equipped  to  fight  to  the  front,  to  the 
rear,  and  to  the  sides."  If  formation  fight- 
ing were  the  coming  tactics  of  the  air  it 
appeared  that  there  was  little  use  for  the  single- 
seater.  Its  chief  value  is  its  superior  maneuver- 
ability but  formations  are  essentially  unwieldy. 
They  were  to  be  protected  by  their  armament 
rather  than  by  manipulation.  As  a  matter  of  fact 
further  development  of  squadron  flying  brought 
the  single-seater  into  greater  favor;  in  the  mean- 
time we  had  definitely  eliminated  it  from  our  pro- 
gram. But  in  so  fickle  a  matter,  it  might  have 
turned  out  that  we  had  made  single-seaters  only 
to  find  them  useless.  As  it  was  we  didn't  make 
them  only  to  find  them  desirable.  But  on  this 
point  it  should  be  said  that  considering  the  facili- 
ties of  Europe  for  providing  single-seaters  it  was 
better  that  we  should  have  neglected  them  than 
the  various  types  of  two-seaters.  We  followed  the 
best  advice  we  could  get  and  the  best  judgment  of 
General  Pershing  and  the  Boiling  Commission, 
though  it  transpired  that  just  as  we  abandoned 
the  chasse  machines  the  front  began  to  appreciate 
them  more  than  ever. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

ORIGIN  OF  THE  LIBERTY  ENGINE 

THE  demand  from  all  quarters  of  Allied  air 
effort  was  for  an  engine  of  high  power.  When  we 
entered  the  war  Europe  was  rapidly  growing  away 
from  the  smaller  engines.  Practically  every 
proved  and  accepted  engine  then  in  service  was 
acknowledged  to  be  behind  the  times.  European 
inventors  and  manufacturers  were  working  on 
engines  of  much  greater  horse  power  than  had 
hitherto  been  used.  So  far  as  taking  a  proved 
European  engine  and  putting  it  into  production 
in  this  country  was  concerned,  it  was  certain  that 
by  the  time  production  had  been  attained,  it  would 
be  more  or  less  antiquated  for  those  uses  calling 
for  motors  of  large  power.  There  was  nothing  to 
do  but  to  take  the  risk  in  part,  for  some  kind  of  a 
motor  in  large  numbers  was  better  than  none. 
That  being  the  case,  the  obvious  thing  to  do  was 
to  stimulate  the  production  of  those  European 
types  that  had  already  been  put  into  production 

63 


64  Wings  of  War 

in  this  country  and  to  limit  the  new  effort  to  such 
a  machine  as  the  Le  Rhone  which  was  likely  to  be 
of  some  utility  either  for  advanced  training  or  for 
pursuit  service  'planes.  So,  our  aircraft  executives 
did  promptly  take  up  the  Hispano-Suiza  150  H.  P. 
which  the  Wright-Martin  Aircraft  Corporation — 
formerly  the  Simplex  Motor  Company — had  finally 
put  into  successful  production  and  the  ico-H.  P. 
Gnome  which  was  in  minor  production  by  the 
General  Vehicle  Company,  and  proceed  from  the 
beginning  with  the  Le  Rhone.  Even  with  this 
conservative  decision,  it  was  soon  found  that  the 
little  Gnome  would  have  to  be  abandoned  and 
that  the  Hispano-Suiza  would  have  to  be  remod- 
eled to  give  greater  power. 

As  to  the  problem  of  the  demand  for  a  motor 
of  far  greater  power  than  had  yet  been  success- 
fully developed,  the  first  suggestion  was  that  we 
take  up  one  or  more  of  the  new  foreign  engines 
which  were  then  being  developed  but  were  not  in 
production,  such  as  the  Bugatti  and  the  Lorraine- 
Dietrich.  There  was  also  the  Rolls-Royce,  which 
was  then  the  most  highly  powered  engine  in  use 
in  Europe.  It  seemed  that  the  proper  course  to 
take  was  to  join  in  the  development  of  the  untried 
foreign  engines  and  begin  immediately  the  produc- 
tion of  the  Rolls-Royce  in  this  country.  These 


Origin  of  the  Liberty  Engine     65 

matters,  however,  had  to  be  left  in  the  early 
months  very  largely  to  the  determination  of  the 
Boiling  Commission.  In  other  words  it  was  impos- 
sible to  arrive  promptly  at  a  judicious  decision, 
and  it  was  felt  that  we  must  not  make  the  mistake 
the  Allies  had  made  of  littering  their  training  fields 
and  the  battle  front  with  innumerable  different 
designs  and  types  of  'planes  and  engines.  The 
French  and  English  were  experimenting  with  or 
producing  eighty-three  different  types  of  engines 
and  'planes — none  of  them  fully  standardized — 
with  chaos  in  factories,  machine  shops,  repairs,  and 
replacements.  The  Germans  had  concentrated  on 
a  few  types  of  engines  and  'planes  and  their  gen- 
eral efficiency  in  the  air  was  largely  due  to  this 
fact.  This  was  one  of  the  lessons  of  the  war  up  to 
that  time.  It  would  have  been  folly  for  us  not  to 
have  acted  in  accordance  with  it. 

Within  six  weeks  after  we  entered  the  war  we 
had  decided  on  these  three  things  with  respect  to 
engines: 

First:  We  would  make  use  of  the  accepted 
American  engines,  which  were  adapted  to  train- 
ing purposes. 

Second:  We  would  put  into  production  three 
types  of  foreign  engines,  which  promised  possi- 
bilities of  early  realization  of  quantity  production 


66  Wings  of  War 

— engines  that  seemed  likely  to  be  of  some  service 
in  the  program,  regardless  of  the  daily  growing 
demand  for  engines  of  greater  power. 

Third :  We  would  proceed  as  promptly  as  pos- 
sible with  the  selection  of  one  or  more  types  of 
the  then  developing  high-power  foreign  engines. 
Because  of  the  lack  of  information  an  early  de- 
cision was  here  impossible,  except  in  the  case  of  the 
Rolls-Royce,  and  unexpected  difficulties  of  another 
nature  arose  in  connection  with  it,  difficulties 
that  will  be  explained  in  another  chapter. 

The  impossibility  of  an  early  decision  in  this 
vital  matter  led  to  one  of  the  grand  decisions  of 
the  war — a  decision  whose  boldness  was  of  the 
kind  that  stakes  all  on  a  single  resolve.  Mr.  E.  A. 
Deeds,  afterwards  Colonel,  was  in  May,  1917, 
simply  a  member  of  the  impotent  Aircraft  Pro- 
duction Board,  but  as  such  he  was  involved  in  all 
the  deliberations  and  determinations  of  the  hour, 
as  well  as  all  its  bewilderments  and  futilities.  As 
a  great  manufacturer  and  a  successful  executive, 
used  to  prompt  decisions  and  swift  performance, 
as  one  thoroughly  familiar  with  the  great  produc- 
tive capacity  and  mechanical  engineering  ability 
of  America,  and  especially  of  the  automobile  indus- 
try, it  was  maddening  to  him  to  think  of  the  gulf 
between  potentiality  and  realization. 


Origin  of  the  Liberty  Engine     67 

Must  this  resourceful  and  industrially  powerful 
America  wait  for  months  before  it  could  choose  the 
great  motor  or  motors  of  the  war?  Must  the 
great  potential  capacity  of  the  nation  for  the  pro- 
duction of  aerial  power  remain  inert  while  the 
coming  engine  was  chosen  from  the  European  can- 
didates for  the  honor?  The  tendency  had  been 
all  toward  such  a  paralyzing  delay.  Americans 
were  infants  in  aircraft  engineering  and  manu- 
facturing, as  such,  and  were  properly  humble  and 
desirous  of  following  foreign  precepts  and  instruc- 
tion. But  as  he  chafed  at  the  delay  it  was  borne 
in  on  Colonel  Deeds,  who  was  coming  more  and 
more  to  be  looked  upon  as  the  evolved  leader  of 
the  inchoate  aircraft  organization,  that  after  all 
an  aircraft  motor  was  nothing  more  than  a  highly 
refined  and  specialized  internal  combustion  motor. 
We  had  not  undertaken  to  make  the  highest  types 
in  this  country  because  there  had  been  in  them 
no  business  appeal  to  the  great  manufacturers  of 
motors.  An  aerial  motor  of  extraordinary  power 
was  a  new  thing,  then  on  the  lap  of  the  gods.  Our 
motor  engineers  were  familiar  with  all  the  princi- 
ples of  design  and  they  knew  the  essential  require- 
ments of  materials.  Why,  since  a  new  thing  was 
demanded  by  the  progress  of  aerial  warfare,  should 
not  America  bring  it  forth?  Months  might  thus 


68  Wings  of  War 

be  saved  in  choosing  an  engine  and  months  more 
in  achieving  quantity  production  of  it.  While  ex- 
ploring Europe  for  the  coming  engine  why  not  ex- 
plore America  as  well,  and  take  the  great  chance 
of  beginning  to  do  something  great? 

The  momentous  decision  was  reached  about  the 
25th  of  May,  1917.  At  any  rate  it  was  on  that 
day,  less  than  three  weeks  from  his  entrance  into 
the  aircraft  council,  that  Mr.  Deeds  communicated 
to  Mr.  Waldon,  with  whom  he  was  most  intimately 
associated,  his  decision  to  undertake  to  produce 
a  new,  high-powered,  unit-system,  standardized 
American  motor,  which  according  to  the  number  of 
cylinders  would  give,  in  the  different  steps  of 
power  required  for  different  purposes  of  aerial  use, 
the  maximum  of  power  combined  with  the  mini- 
mum of  weight. 

Mr.  Waldon  received  the  idea  enthusiastically, 
for  he  had  been  thinking  along  much  the  same 
lines  as  Mr.  Deeds.  In  his  mind  the  idea  was 
reinforced  by  his  experience  in  connection  with 
official  aviation  matters  since  the  preceding 
November. 

Each  passing  month  had  reminded  him  that 
while  the  adoption  of  European  models  in  part  or 
altogether  was  inevitable,  the  gap  between  the 
time  of  adoption  and  the  time  of  attainment  of 


Origin  of  the  Liberty  Engine     69 

quantity  production  would  be  intolerably  long  and 
tedious.  He  had  been  greatly  impressed  by  the 
fact  that  it  had  taken  the  Wright- Martin  Com- 
pany with  a  capable  engineering  organization, 
with  numerous  models,  the  completest  drawings 
and  specifications,  according  to  European  ideas, 
and  the  assistance  of  a  numerous  staff  of  French 
engineers  and  mechanics  thoroughly  familiar  with 
practical  production  in  the  home  factories  of  the 
Hispano-Suiza,  thirteen  months  and  the  loss  of 
millions  of  dollars  to  get  into  production.  He  was 
also  familiar  with  the  somewhat  similar  experience 
of  the  General  Vehicle  Company  in  transplanting 
the  Gnome. 

American  manufacturing  methods  are  basically 
the  methods  of  machine-tool  production.  Euro- 
pean methods  are  basically  the  methods  of  the 
expert  and  intelligent  mechanic  and  machinist. 
The  European  has  not  our  perfection  of  machines ; 
we  have  not  his  perfection  of  the  mechanic — at 
least  not  in  such  numbers  as  to  give  quantity  pro- 
duction. You  can  introduce  a  mechanic  or  a  group 
of  mechanics  to  a  machine,  provide  the  materials 
and  hand-tools,  and  tell  them  to  make  others  like 
it.  In  a  few  days,  or  a  few  weeks,  they  will  be  in 
production — on  a  small  scale.  You  cannot  intro- 
duce a  model  of  a  machine  to  a  machine-tool  or  a 


X>  Wings  of  War 

group  of  them  and  tell  them  to  begin  forthwith  to 
reproduce  their  fellow.  In  fact  you  must  first 
make  the  machine-tool.  And  then  it  is  only  me- 
chanical— not  human.  American  manufacture  is 
the  mechanical  making  of  parts  by  the  thousands 
— each  precisely  like  its  predecessor — and  then  the 
assembling  of  those  parts  into  the  machine — each 
exactly,  too,  like  its  predecessor.  Nothing  can  be 
left  to  chance  or  fitting  or  adaptation  by  the  work- 
men. The  workmen  are  manipulators  of  machines 
— not  mechanics  in  the  European  sense.  Before 
production  in  quantities  in  America,  therefore, 
must  go  a  tedious  period  of  preparation — the  mak- 
ing of  thousands  of  drawings  of  the  parts,  the  in- 
finitely careful  preparation  of  the  dies,  then  the 
thousands  of  tools,  jigs,  fixtures,  etc.,  and  also  the 
machines  that  are  to  apply  these  tools  in  the  mak- 
ing of  the  parts.  All  this  process  has  to  be  gone 
through  with  an  American  design  as  well  as  an 
adopted  foreign  design,  but  in  the  case  of  the 
American  design  the  engineering  and  the  drawings 
are  from  the  start  adapted  to  American  manufac- 
turing methods.  In  the  case  of  the  foreign  machine 
the  drawings  are  not  only  inadequate  for  machine 
reproduction  but  parts  are  not  designed  with  a 
view  to  much  adaptation.  It  is  impossible  quan- 
titatively to  reproduce  a  complex  foreign  machine 


Origin  of  the  Liberty  Engine     71 

in  this  country  without  changing  the  shape  and 
design  of  its  parts  to  some  extent. 

So,  both  Messrs.  Deeds  and  Waldon  perceived 
a  distinct  advantage  in  the  creation  of  an  Ameri- 
can type.  In  the  stage  of  design  and  experimen- 
tation, moreover,  while  much  might  be  gained, 
nothing  was  to  be  lost  except  the  trivial  cost  of 
the  development  work;  the  survey  of  European 
engines  proceeding  undeterred.  The  critical  de- 
cision would  come  when  the  moment  arrived  to 
accept  the  proposed  American  motor  and  order  it 
into  expensive  and  extensive  production. 

The  decision  arrived  at  by  Colonel  Deeds  clari- 
fied the  American  aviation  problem  to  a  very- 
great  extent.  Its  successful  realization  put  us  into 
the  aerial  side  of  the  war  with  American-made 
equipment  to  the  degree  which  the  early  termina- 
tion of  the  war  and  the  vicissitudes  of  the  realiza- 
tion of  the  decision  permitted. 

But  for  this  decision  and  the  vigorous  ways  in 
which  action  followed  in  those  rough-and-ready 
days  before  the  strait- jacket  of  military  red-tape 
had  encompassed  the  resourceful  and  highly 
initiative  civilians  who  were  left  to  face  the 
problem,  there  would  not  have  been  a  single 
American-made  airplane  in  France  when  the  war 
ended. 


72  Wings  of  War 

The  number  of  such  airplanes  in  France  and  in 
service  when  the  armistice  was  signed  was  much 
larger  than  commonly  realized.  Out  of  the  3227 
De  Haviland  4's  actually  delivered  by  November 
n,  1918  (since  increased  to 4842),  according  to  the 
official  statistics,  1885  had  been  shipped  abroad, 
1185  had  been  received  at  the  French  ports,  1025 
had  been  assembled  at  the  American  aviation 
bases  in  France,  984  had  been  put  into  service 
there,  and  of  these  628  were  in  service  at  the  front, 
457  being  daily  in  commission.  American  ma- 
chines arrived  in  time  to  be  of  great  assistance  in 
the  St.  Mihiel  salient  offensive  and  still  more  so  in 
the  Argonne  fighting.  Looking  backward  now  it 
is  possible  to  assert  positively  that  this  would  not 
have  been  the  case  had  the  decision  not  been  made 
in  May,  1917,  to  develop  and  manufacture  an 
American  designed  engine. 

Much  has  been  written  that  tends  to  show  that 
the  American  forces  in  France  were  not  sufficiently 
supplied  with  airplanes.  Some  of  this  is  based  on 
the  feeling  of  the  infantrymen  and  artillerymen 
that  a  sufficient  force  would  be  one  that  would 
always  prevent  the  enemy  avions  from  crossing 
the  lines.  In  this  sense  our  armies  were  insuffi- 
ciently supplied,  and  so  were  the  French  and 
British  armies.  Besides,  as  Gen.  Peter  A.  Traub 


Origin  of  the  Liberty  Engine     73 

remarked  in  telling  of  the  work  of  the  Thirty- 
fifth  Division  in  the  Argonne  fighting,  "the 
air  is  a  very  large  place."  Right  up  to  the  end 
of  the  war,  the  German  air  service  was,  all  things 
considered,  about  on  a  par  with  that  of  the  Al- 
lies. There  is  competent  authority,  though,  for 
the  assertion  that  from  a  military  organization 
point  of  view  the  supply  of  aerial  forces  kept  pace 
with  the  expansion  of  the  American  fighting  forces 
in  France.  Confessedly,  this  is  a  statement  that 
the  public  will  receive  with  skepticism,  but  it 
should  be  remembered  that  it  does  not  apply  to 
the  subject  of  territorial  bombing  operations,  but 
only  to  the  combat  equipment  of  armies.  The 
public  looked  upon  the  possibilities  of  bombing 
operations  against  enemy  territory  as  of  greater 
importance  than  direct  aerial  military  activities. 
Army  men  largely  took  the  opposite  point  of  view. 
If  the  latter  is  the  correct  one  the  general  inference 
from  statements  made  by  our  aviation  officers  is 
that  notwithstanding  all  delays  in  production  as 
compared  with  program,  the  delivery  of  the  equip- 
ment kept  pace  with  the  development  of  our  armies 
at  the  front.  That  most  of  the  airplanes  were  sup- 
plied by  the  French  up  to  the  signing  of  the  armis- 
tice does  not  detract  from  the  importance  of  the 
fact,  for  as  with  artillery  and  other  equipment,  the 


74  Wings  of  War 

general  program  counted  on  the  French  filling  the 
gap  until  America  could  get  into  production  with 
the  machines  that  were  novel  to  her  manufac- 
turers. Thus  it  appears  that  notwithstanding  the 
failure  of  the  French  to  make  deliveries  according 
to  schedule,  they  did  come  as  fast  as  our  armies 
grew.  Lieut.-Col.  Lewis  H.  Brereton  (Chief 
of  Air  Service  Operations,  U.  S.  A.),  positively 
states  that  "the  air  service  organization  at 
the  front  was  at  all  times  abreast  of  the  require- 
ments of  the  armies  at  the  front."  He  further 
says: 

"At  the  cessation  of  hostilities,  we  had  a  total 
of  forty-seven  squadrons  in  active  service  on  the 
front,  eleven  of  which  were  equipped  with  the 
American  'plane  and  Liberty  motor.  The  total 
number  of  'planes  in  our  forces  on  the  front  at  this 
time  was  eight  hundred  and  sixty.  The  total 
number  of  Allied  'planes  on  the  Western  front  has 
been  estimated  as  from  fifty-five  hundred  to  sev- 
enty-five hundred.  I  believe  that  seven  thousand 
is  more  nearly  correct.  Various  estimates  have 
placed  the  German  effective  strength  as  between 
thirty-five  hundred  and  four  thousand  on  the 
Western  front.  These  figures  apparently  give  us 
an  enormous  preponderance  of  air  service  over  the 
Western  front.  Actually,  however,  conditions  were 


Origin  of  the  Liberty  Engine     75 

such  that  we  were  at  all  times  in  an  area  of  active 
operations  opposed  by  an  air  sendee  which  com- 
pared very  favorably  with  ours  in  strength  and 
efficiency." 


CHAPTER  IX 

BIRTH  OF  THE  LIBERTY  ENGINE 

ONCE  the  conception  of  an  American  standard- 
ized motor  of  power  possibilities  that  would  keep 
it  in  the  field  for  two  or  three  years  or  longer  was 
crystallized  it  won  almost  immediate  favor  in  the 
higher  aircraft  circles.  The  idea  was  in  accordance 
with  the  views  of  all  the  foreign  aviation  missions 
then  in  America,  at  least  so  far  as  the  phase  of 
standardization  and  large  power  was  concerned. 
Even  though  they  strongly  favored  their  own 
evolving  engines  of  high  power  they  could  but  see 
in  the  proposed  new  motor  one  more  candidate 
for  the  final  honors.  There  was  no  reason  why 
America  should  not  try  to  create  the  desired 
engine.  The  new  idea  promised  action,  and  as 
the  engine  is  the  major  factor  in  aircraft  construc- 
tion, it  also  promised  a  solid  foundation  for  the 
whole  future  structure  of  the  program.  It  was  as 
a  beacon  in  the  darkness. 

Having  firmly  grasped  the  idea  of  an  engine 
76 


Birth  of  the  Liberty  Engine      77 

which  should  develop  greater  power  than-*any 
other  proved  engine  in  the  field,  the  next  thing  for 
Mr.  Deeds  to  do  was  to  find  the  engineers  who 
would  sympathetically  receive  the  suggestion  and 
faithfully  carry  it  out  along  the  lines  he  laid  down. 
These  were:  (i)  that  it  must  be  light  in  propor- 
tion to  power;  (2)  that  it  must  embody  no  theory 
or  device  that  had  not  already  been  proved  in 
existing  engines,  and  (3)  was  to  keep  away  from 
all  experimentation  and  be  adaptable  to  quantity 
production.  It  was  not  to  be  an  invention,  but 
the  simplest  and  most  powerful  composite  of  the 
best  known  practice. 

The  selection  of  engineers  who  were  equal  to  the 
task  was  vital.  In  the  first  place  it  was  thought 
that  they  must  be  engineers  who  were  not  only 
familiar  with  aeromotors  but  also  men  who  were 
familiar  with  production  processes  and  require- 
ments. Various  men  were  suggested  and  discussed 
and  the  choice  finally  fell  on  J.  G.  Vincent,  chief 
engineer  of  the  Packard  Motor  Car  Company,  and 
E.  J.  Hall,  of  the  Hall-Scott  Motor  Car  Company. 
The  choice  proved  to  be  an  inspiration.  Mr. 
Vincent  was  already  a  believer  in  the  idea  of  a 
standardized  engine  with  a  maximum  of  inter- 
changeable parts  and  a  power  development  accord- 
ing to  the  number  of  primary  units — an  engine 


78  Wings  of  War 

which  might  conceivably  in  the  end  give  us  but 
one  basic  type  for  all  the  fixed-cylinder  engines 
the  program  might  require.  He  had  developed 
experimentally  at  the  Packard  works,  during  two 
years  of  painstaking  research  and  effort,  an  engine 
that  he  thought  would  about  meet  such  require- 
ments. He  was  ambitious  to  have  his  engine 
adopted  as  the  American  engine,  and  he  was  in 
Washington  for  that  purpose.  Mr.  Vincent  was  a 
highly  educated  and  trained  engineer  and  was  as 
familiar  with  German  and  other  foreign  aviation 
engine  development  as  any  other  engineer  in  Ameri- 
ca. Taking  the  German  Mercedes  as  his  starting 
point  he  had  developed  powerful  automobile  racing 
engines  and  several  aviation  motors.  He  brought 
to  the  task  the  special  equipment  of  the  engineer 
learned  in  the  theory  of  design  and  the  technique 
of  his  profession.  He  was  subjected  to  the  severe 
test  of  having  the  motors  he  had  fathered  rejected 
as  too  heavy  and  otherwise  unsuited  for  the  pur- 
pose in  view,  and  being  at  the  same  time  required 
to  sit  down  with  another  engineer  to  design  a  com- 
posite machine  that  would  be  better  than  his  own 
and  yet  would  not  be  exclusively  his.  He  met  the 
test  in  a  whole-souled,  patriotic  manner. 

Mr.  Hall  was  a  fitting  foil  for  Mr.  Vincent. 
If  the  latter  was  an  engineer  of  thought  and  theory, 


Birth  of  the  Liberty  Engine      79 

the  former  was  one  of  work  and  practice.  The 
one  was  learned  in  a  scientific  way,  and  the  other 
was  learned  empirically.  Mr.  Vincent  had  ac- 
quired his  knowledge  through  the  eye;  Mr.  Hall 
had  acquired  his  through  his  hands.  The  former 
arrived  at  his  objectives  by  calculation ;  the  latter 
by  feeling  his  way.  If  Mr.  Vincent  was  the 
scholar-engineer,  Mr.  Hall  was  the  mechanic-en- 
gineer. The  latter  had  had  more  experience  in  the 
actual  designing  and  production  of  aerial  engines 
but  the  former  had  had  a  more  extensive  engineer- 
ing association  with  the  best  American  quantity 
production  processes.  Mr.  Hall  had  to  submit 
to  the  fate  of  being  told  that  the  12-cylinder 
engine  which  he  had  developed  was  too  heavy  for 
the  purpose  in  view,  which  was  to  get  a  motor 
of  about  225  H.  P.  and  eight  cylinders  with  less 
than  two  pounds  of  weight  per  unit  of  H.  P.  Like 
Mr.  Vincent  he  took  the  adverse  decision  and  the 
new  instructions  in  good  part. 

Mr.  Vincent  had  arrived  in  Washington  about 
the  time  Mr.  Deeds  had  made  his  great  decision 
and  Mr.  Hall  had  just  left  for  San  Francisco.  A 
telegram  caught  him  at  Cleveland  and  turned  him 
back.  The  two  men  who  were  to  find  the  way  out 
of  the  aviation  wilderness  were  brought  together 
in  suite  201,  Willard  Hotel,  Washington,  on  the 


8o  Wings  of  War 

afternoon  of  Saturday,  May  29,  1917.  The  objec- 
tive was  explained  to  them  carefully  and  they  were 
facetiously  told  that  they  would  be  shut  up  to- 
gether until  they  produced  what  was  required  of 
them — and  that  the  first  one  who  reached  out  for 
some  pet  original  idea  or  any  untried  principle 
would  "have  his  hand  taken  off."  They  were 
strangers,  never  having  met  until  the  great  en- 
gineering task  of  the  aerial  side  of  the  American 
effort  in  the  war  was  laid  before  them.  Mr.  Deeds 
knew  that  between  them  they  had  the  peculiar 
combination  to  achieve  the  purpose.  Both  were 
in  a  receptive  mood  that  afternoon,  and  to  lose  no 
time  Messrs.  Deeds  and  Waldon  went  out  and  got 
drafting  boards  and  carried  them  themselves  to 
the  room  with  the  twin  beds  where  the  two  en- 
gineers were  to  live  until  they  had  evolved  the  com- 
ing engine.  J.  M.  Schoonmaker,  Jr.,  an  engineer 
known  to  Mr.  Deeds,  happened  to  be  encountered 
on  the  street  by  the  latter,  and  although  he  was 
on  his  honeymoon,  was  drafted  from  his  bride 
and  commandeered  as  a  temporary  draftsman. 
K.  M.  Zimmerschied,  metallurgist  of  the  General 
Motors  Company,  was  in  Washington  and  was 
immediately  called  to  assist.  The  two  engineers 
began  at  once  to  compare  opinions,  exchange 
views,  discuss  general  principles,  and  begin  making 


Birth  of  the  Liberty  Engine     81 

layouts.  The  first  session  lasted  all  the  afternoon, 
all  the  night,  and  until  2  o'clock  Sunday  morning. 
And,  so,  tensely  the  creative  work  went  on  for 
five  days.  Whatever  was  required  was  furnished 
on  the  spot.  It  was  regarded  as  a  race  against 
time.  At  midnight  of  the  first  day  Dr.  Stratton 
of  the  Bureau  of  Standards  was  brought  to  the 
hotel  to  be  asked  to  provide  room  for  the  drafts- 
men who  would  elaborate  the  layouts,  which  he 
gladly  consented  to  do.  When  the  decision  was 
communicated  to  the  aviation  representatives  of 
the  foreign  governments  then  in  Washington  that 
the  United  States  was  seeking  to  produce  an  engine 
that  would  be  freely  given  to  the  Allies  they  unhes- 
itatingly brought  out  the  confidential  drawings  and 
specifications  they  had  of  foreign  engines,  and 
Messrs.  Vincent  and  Hall  had  the  benefit  of  all 
they  contained.  During  these  momentous  days 
other  engineers  came,  conferred,  offered  their  sug- 
gestions, and  departed. 

The  main  decisions  on  which  the  two  engineers 
early  agreed  was  that  the  new  engines  should  be 
built  around  5x7  individual  steel  cylinders,  with 
aluminum  piston,  forked  connecting  rods,  and  a 
direct-drive  propeller.  This  size  of  cylinder  was 
adopted  because  both  the  Hall-Scott  Company 
and  the  Curtiss  Company  had  found  it  the  most 


82  Wings  of  War 

satisfactory  after  much  experience  and  because 
Major  Tulasne  of  the  French  mission  was  just  then 
informed  that  the  new  Lorraine-Dietrich  engine 
then  coming  out  in  France  had  cylinders  of  approx- 
imately that  size. 

The  end  of  five  days  of  concentrated  effort  found 
the  engine  designed  in  the  main.  After  that  it  was 
a  draftsman  and  mechanic's  job,  so  far  as  the  first 
engines  were  concerned,  except  that  the  design  was 
passed  in  review  by  eminent  motor  engineers,  who 
proposed  some  changes.  Copies  of  the  first  draw- 
ings were  sent  to  such  men  as  H.  M.  Crane,  chief 
engineer  of  the  Wright-Martin  Company,  who  had 
wrestled  with  the  American  adaptation  and  pro- 
duction of  the  Hispano-Suiza  Motor;  David 
Fergusson  of  the  Pierce- Arrow  Company;  D.  Mc- 
Call  White  of  the  Cadillac  Motor  Company,  who 
had  been  associated  with  the  Napier  Company  in 
England,  and  Fekete  of  the  Hudson  Motor  Car 
Company.  These  men  were  chosen  because  of 
their  ability  and  experience  and  because  they  were 
neither  "professorial"  theorists  nor  "mentally 
dishonest."  They  thought  straight  and  consis- 
tently. They  were  told  to  find  every  possible 
fault  they  could  and  make  every  possible  sugges- 
tion that  would  be  in  harmony  with  the  general 
design.  As  Colonel  Deeds  well  says:  "It  was 


Birth  of  the  Liberty  Engine      83 

important  at  this  time  to  protect  the  poor  engine 
from  the  professor,  the  theorist,  and  the  would-be 
engineer.  It  was  an  engine  based  on  practice — on 
what  had  been  done — and  it  must  be  kept  so." 
This  statement  evinced  no  disrespect  for  the  sci- 
entific engineer  or  the  technical  man,  but  an  engine 
that  was  based  on  proved  practice  would  have  suf- 
fered had  any  new  theory  been  applied  to  it. 

This  is  really  why  there  was  no  such  doubt  about 
the  success  of  the  motor  in  the  minds  of  those  who 
were  early  acquainted  with  its  nature,  as  the  pub- 
lic may  have  felt.  It  was  not  only  an  engineer's 
engine  and  an  aviator's  engine  with  all  engineer- 
ing ventures  left  out,  but  it  was  also — which  was 
of  vital  importance — a  producer's  engine;  for 
before  the  first  engines  were  built,  such  masters  of 
production  as  Henry  Ford  and  his  associates, 
Beall  and  Roberts  of  the  Packard  Company, 
Leland  and  Lang  of  the  Cadillac,  and  Chrysler  of 
the  Buick  were  brought  into  consultation. 

There  was  nothing  magical  or  revolutionary 
about  the  Liberty  motor.  Its  essential  planning 
in  such  a  short  time  was  wonderful,  but  the  two 
able  engineers  who  put  it  together  from  the  world's 
best  in  such  a  dramatic  manner  were  not  origi- 
nating or  making  any  revolutionary  innovations. 
Secrecy  regarding  its  design  was  necessary,  and 


84  Wings  of  War 

secrecy  means  mystery — and  a  mystery  is  apt  to 
be  conjectured  to  be  a  miracle.  It  was  a  marvel 
but  not  one  of  fortuitously  successful  engineering 
venture  into  the  unknown.  The  "insiders"  fully 
understood  this.  The  public  and  even  some  of  the 
outside  experts  did  not.  Thence  arose  much  well- 
meant  criticism,  the  burden  of  which  was  that  our 
aviation  authorities  had  staked  all  on  a  novel 
motor  that  it  would  take  months  to  develop  and 
that  might  then  be  a  failure,  while  there  were  tried 
and  approved  engines  that  could  be  put  into  pro- 
duction at  once.  The  fact  was  that  they  had  not 
staked  all  on  the  Liberty  motor,  that  they  were 
seeking  to  utilize  the  high-power  foreign  engines 
that  were  available,  that  only  one  of  them  was  in 
production  abroad,  and  that  the  foreign  engines  of 
lower  power  that  were  put  into  production  in  this 
country  had  to  be  enlarged  later.  As  will  be  shown 
farther  on,  the  demand  for  increased  power  was 
so  great  that  initial  production  of  the  Liberty 
itself  had  to  be  shifted  from  the  8-  to  the  12-cylin- 
der,  and  the  power  of  the  latter  in  turn  stepped  up 
to  keep  up  with  or  ahead  of  the  demand — thus 
delaying  production  to  be  certain  of  meeting  the 
purpose  of  production. 


CHAPTER  X 

MAKING  THE  FIRST  LIBERTY  MOTORS 

EVEN  after  the  grand  decision  was  made,  the 
two  engineers  had  done  their  basic  work,  and 
the  drawings  were  being  made — yes,  even  after  the 
first  sample  motors  were  made  and  production  had 
been  ordered,  it  was  no  easy  matter  to  hold  to  the 
purpose.  Skepticism  among  the  uninformed  was 
almost  universal  and  Colonel  Deeds,  Colonel 
Waldon,  and  their  associates  were  implored  to 
abandon  their  course  before  it  was  too  late.  Criti- 
cism soon  became  rampant,  and  the  more  so,  as 
with  each  passing  day  the  confidence  of  the  re- 
sponsible men  in  the  Liberty  motor  increased,  with 
a  consequent  tendency  to  centralize  effort  on  it  to 
the  exclusion  in  some  degree  of  the  other  possible 
motors.  Time  was  the  great  desideratum,  action 
was  imperative.  So,  the  first  decision  to  create  a 
new  motor  was  followed  by  the  audacious  one — a 
really  critical  one — to  proceed  with  production 
immediately.  In  fact  the  one  blended  rapidly  into 

85 


86  Wings  of  War 

the  other.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  this  was 
one  of  the  great  decisions  of  the  war.  It  was  cour- 
ageous beyond  belief.  It  revealed  the  fact  that 
aircraft  production  had  found  a  leader.  Its  luster 
is  in  no  wise  dimmed  by  the  subsequent  delays  in 
realizing  production  in  large  quantities  as  early 
as  promised. 

Similar  and  other  delays  would  have  attached  to 
any  motor  that  might  have  been  taken  up  at  that 
time.  Colonel  Deeds  and  his  associates  and  the  man- 
ufacturers may  perhaps  be  justly  blamed  for  their 
aspiring  programs,  but  they  were  striving  to  meet 
the  requirements  of  a  volume  of  production  that 
was  determined  by  the  size  of  the  aviation  arm, 
with  the  purpose  of  putting  that  arm  into  the  field 
full-fledged  in  the  spring  and  summer  of  1918.  It 
was  put  up  to  them  to  do  the  impossible,  they 
firmly  believed  that  they  could  do  it,  they  said 
they  could  do  it.  It  was  a  day  when  men,  hot  with 
the  urge  of  patriotism,  of  self-sacrifice,  had  deleted 
the  word  "impossible"  from  their  dictionaries. 
If  the  general  staff  wanted  something  in  six 
months,  it  declared  that  it  must  be  done  in  four, 
and  the  aircraft  managers  persuaded  the  manu- 
facturers that  it  could  be  done  in  three,  and  the 
latter  promised  that  it  would  be  done  in  two. 
These  underestimates  of  the  time  required  to  do 


The  First  Liberty  Motors       87 

the  work  led  to  disappointments  but  it  can  be 
said  for  them  that  they  had  the  effect  of  arousing 
determination  and  stimulating  effort  all  along  the 
line.  The  mark  set  was  unfortunately  impossible 
of  attainment  but  the  actual  achievement  was 
made  extraordinarily  remarkable  because  of  the 
superhuman  requirements. 

Even  as  the  drawings  were  being  snatched  from 
the  hands  of  the  feverishly  toiling  draftsmen  and 
despatched  to  the  tool  room  of  the  Packard  Motor 
Company,  verbal  orders  were  given  to  the  manu- 
facturers to  get  ready  for  production.  In  those 
days  the  business  men  who  had  come  into  the 
organization  had  not  learned  the  devious  and  time- 
killing  routines  of  government  methods.  They 
acted  for  the  country  as  they  were  accustomed  to 
act  for  themselves.  They  decided  swiftly  and  tele- 
phoned, telegraphed,  and  talked  orders.  The  first 
small  motor  had  not  arrived  in  Washington  before 
there  was  the  lively  activity  of  great  preparation 
in  the  plants  that  were  to  undertake  the  work, 
and  one  colossal  plant — that  of  the  Lincoln  Motor 
Company — was  started  from  the  grass-roots.  The 
making  of  the  first  engine  was  as  composite  as 
its  designing. 

The  parts  for  the  first  engine  were  made  in 
various  plants  as  follows: 


88  Wings  of  War 

The  General  Aluminum  &  Brass  Manufacturing 
Company  of  Detroit  made  the  bronze-back,  bab- 
bit-lined bearings. 

The  Cadillac  Motor  Car  Company,  of  Detroit, 
made  the  connecting  rods,  connecting-rod  upper- 
end  bushings,  connecting-rod  bolts,  and  rocker-arm 
assemblies. 

The  L.  O.  Gordon  Manufacturing  Company,  of 
Muskegon,  made  the  cam  shafts. 

The  Park  Drop  Forge  Company,  of  Cleveland, 
made  the  crank-shaft  forgings.  These  forgings, 
completely  heat-treated,  were  produced  in  three 
days,  because  Mr.  Hall  gave  them  permission  to 
use  his  dies. 

The  crank  shafts  were  machined  at  the  Packard 
factory. 

The  Hall-Scott  Motor  Car  Company,  of  Ber- 
keley, Cal.,  made  all  the  bevel  gears. 

The  Hess-Bright  Manufacturing  Company,  of 
Philadelphia,  made  the  ball  bearings. 

The  Burd  High  Compression  Ring  Company, 
of  Rockford,  111.,  made  the  piston  rings. 

The  Aluminum  Castings  Company,  of  Cleve- 
land, made  the  die-cast  alloy  pistons,  and  ma- 
chined them  up  to  grinding. 

The  Rich  Tool  Company,  of  Chicago,  made  the 
valves. 


Woman  Operator  Machining  Cylinders  of  Liberty  Motors  (at  the 
Cadillac  Plant,  Detroit).     The  War  Emergency  Necessi- 
tated the  Employment  of  Thousands  of  Women  in 
the  Aircraft  Industry 


The  First  Liberty  Motors       89 

The  Gibson  Company,  of  Muskegon,  made  the 
springs. 

The  Packard  Company  made  all  the  patterns, 
and  the  aluminum  castings  were  made  by  the  Gen- 
eral Aluminum  &  Brass  Manufacturing  Company. 

The  Packard  Company  used  many  of  its  own 
dies  in  order  to  speedily  obtain  suitable  drop  forg- 
ings,  and  also  made  new  dies. 

The  carburetors  were  supplied  by  the  Zenith 
Carburetor  Company  of  Detroit. 

The  ignition  apparatus  was  made  by  the  Delco 
Company  of  Dayton,  Ohio. 

The  Packard  Company  produced  all  the  other 
parts. 

As  fast  as  completed  these  parts  were  assembled 
in  the  laboratory  of  the  Packard  Motor  Company 
in  Detroit  and  the  first  complete  engine  arrived  in 
Washington  on  July  3d — just  thirty-five  days  after 
the  decision  that  it  should  be  born.  Every  part 
went  into  its  proper  place  without  difficulty.  The 
engine — an  eight-cylinder — was  kept  in  the  draft- 
ing room  as  a  life-size  model  and  was  never  tested. 
The  second  eight-cylinder  was  completed  two 
weeks  later  and  passed  severest  tests.  The  first 
twelve-cylinder  was  next  rushed  to  completion  and 
had  successfully  passed  its  5O-hour  stand  test  by 
August  25,  1917. 


90  Wings  of  War 

This  test  removed  the  last  shred  of  doubt  that 
might  have  lingered  in  the  minds  of  the  managers 
and  the  experts  who  were  acquainted  with  its 
results.  From  this  time  on  production  was  the  one 
consideration.  The  practical  manufacturers  who 
were  to  make  the  new  machine  in  record-breaking 
quantities  were  given  every  opportunity  to  sug- 
gest changes  that  would  facilitate  production  and 
detect  any  lingering  "bugs"  that  might  still  be 
harbored  in  the  new  motor.  All  of  them  received 
the  new  creation  with  enthusiasm,  and  none  of 
them  ever  doubted  its  success  even  in  the  most 
trying  days  of  changes  and  fault-finding  that  were 
to  follow.  They  were  veterans  in  development  and 
production  and  they  knew  that  troubles  were  ahead 
of  them,  but  they  never  for  a  moment  doubted 
that  they  would  be  surmounted  successfully. 

At  first  it  was  planned  to  have  a  very  large  pro- 
portion of  eight-cylinders  in  the  first  orders.  In 
fact,  an  order  for  ten  thousand  of  them  was  placed 
with  the  Ford  Motor  Company,  and  if  that  order 
had  stood  there  is  little  doubt  that  volume  pro- 
duction would  have  been  reached  within  six 
months.  But  so  rapidly  were  things  evolving  and 
moving  forward  at  the  front,  that  within  a  month 
it  became  evident  that  the  225  H.  P.  of  the  eight- 
cylinder  was  not  enough  to  meet  the  major  require- 


The  First  Liberty  Motors       91 

ment  of  the  times.  So,  this  order,  on  advice  from 
the  front,  was  canceled  and  all  efforts  were  con- 
centrated on  the  12-cylinder.  Subsequent  events 
showed  that  so  sweeping  a  change  was  a  mistake. 
It  turned  out  that  the  wisest  observers  at  the 
front  did  not  themselves  know  which  way  they 
were  going.  The  requirements  did  call  for  more 
and  more  large  motors,  but  the  turn  of  favor 
toward  the  single-seater  left  ample  room  for  large 
numbers  of  engines  from  200  to  300  H.  P.  This, 
however,  was  not  the  business  of  the  producers. 
Their  business  was  to  produce  what  the  front 
demanded. 

The  original  order  for  22,500  motors  was  dis- 
tributed as  follows : 

Packard  Motor  Car  Company 6000 

Lincoln  Motor  Company 6000 

Ford  Motor  Company 5000 

Nordyke  &  Marmon 3000 

General  Motors  Corporation  (Buick  and 

Cadillac) 2000 

Trego  Motors  Corporation 500 

The  criticism  was  immediately  forthcoming  that 
automobile  makers  instead  of  aircraft  manufac- 
turers were  entrusted  with  the  task.  If  we  had 
had  a  group  of  powerful  aeromotor  manufacturers 
in  this  country  the  task  would  naturally  have  been 


92  Wings  of  War 

theirs.  We  did  not  have  such  a  group,  and  such 
domestic  manufacturers  of  strength  and  organi- 
zation as  we  had,  as  well  as  many  of  the  smaller 
ones,  were  already  staggering  under  the  loads  relat- 
ing to  other  parts  of  the  aviation  production  pro- 
gram that  had  been  placed  on  them.  All  the  firms 
named  above  were  makers  of  motors  and  skilled 
in  quantity  production. 

They  had  large  and  accomplished  engineering 
staffs  and  they  had  the  "know-how"  and  the  basic 
facilities  of  production,  and  they  were  to  have  the 
advantage  of  the  continuous  counsels  of  Messrs. 
Vincent  and  Hall,  two  of  the  best  aeronautical 
motor  engineers  in  the  country.  It  is  easier  to 
erect  buildings  and  install  machinery  than  it  is  to 
create  the  human  organization  of  successful  manu- 
facturing. Doubtless  the  engine  makers  would 
have  been  less  confident  of  early  results  and  they 
would  have  avoided  many  difficulties  if  they  had 
previously  been  making  delicate  and  precise  flight 
motors. 

Most  of  them  were  not  eager  for  the  job,  except 
as  they  were  eager  to  do  their  part  in  the  war. 
But  all  of  them  were  inspired  with  the  same  enthu 
siasm  that  led  "Uncle"  Henry  Leland  in  his 
seventy-fifth  year  to  take  a  contract  to  erect  a  vast 
new  factory — the  Lincoln — and  undertake  to  pro- 


Packard  Motor  Car  Company  Plant  at  Detroit.     Original  Plant  and  Emergency 
Extension,  Devoted  Largely  to  Liberty  Engine  Production  During  the  War 


Lincoln  Motor  Company  Plant  at  Detroit,  Rushed  to  Completion  in  Record 
Time  for  Manufacture  of  Liberty  Engines.     Building  Erected,  Organi- 
zation of  6,000  Persons  Created,  and  2,000  Liberty  Motors 
Produced,  All  in  Twelve  Months 


The  First  Liberty  Motors       93 

duce  six  thousand  motors  within  a  year.  It  is 
giving  a  small  measure  of  credit  to  say,  in  passing, 
that  Henry  Leland,  father  of  the  Cadillac  car  and 
company,  who  is  affectionately  known  as  "Uncle" 
in  the  American  automobile  industry,  of  which  he 
is  the  acknowledged  dean  by  reason  of  seniority, 
was,  on  account  of  his  patriotic  devotion,  his  man- 
ufacturing ability  and  prestige,  and  his  unfailing 
enthusiasm,  a  great  factor  in  the  Liberty  motor's 
success. 

All  worked  with  energy  and  concentration,  and 
moreover,  with  a  magnificent  spirit  of  fellowship 
and  cooperation.  House  pride,  trade  secrets,  and 
even  patent  rights  were  forgotten.  It  was  all  for 
one  and  one  for  all.  Thus  were  united  in  a  great 
manufacturing  undertaking  the  resources,  the 
experience,  the  engineering  ability,  and  the  peculiar 
specializations  of  at  least  five  of  the  most  solid, 
careful,  reliable,  and  efficient  manufacturing  insti- 
tutions in  America. 

These  statements  are  not  mere  glittering  gener- 
alities. The  spirit  of  mutual  assistance  was  the 
spontaneous  product  of  the  union  of  men  in  a  com- 
mon cause  for  an  unselfish  purpose,  but  it  was 
applied  practically  and  methodically.  The  man- 
ufacturers were  given  to  understand  that  in  under- 
taking the  production  of  the  Liberty  motor  they 


94  Wings  of  War 

had  made  it  their  child  and  that  they  thereby 
became  as  much  responsible  for  it  as  the  engineers 
and  the  Signal  Corps.  It  was  their  business  to  find 
its  faults  either  from  an  engineering  or  production 
point  of  view — as  well  as  to  make  it  in  great  num- 
bers in  record  time.  They  accepted  this  view,  and 
that  they  acted  on  it  is  proved  by  the  fact  that 
ninety  per  cent,  of  all  the  changes  made  in  the 
course  of  production  were  suggested  by  them. 
They  pooled  their  criticisms  as  well  as  their 
resources.  They  exchanged  ideas  as  well  as  tools 
and  facilities  and  even  made  parts  for  each  other, 
each  plant  doing  more  than  its  proportionate 
share  of  what  it  was  best  fitted  to. 

This  voluntary  and  irregular  but  none  the 
less  admirable  cooperation  of  the  first  days  was 
soon  reduced  to  regularity  and  routine.  Lieut. 
Harold  Emmons,  who  was  charged  by  Colonel 
Deeds  with  the  supervision  of  engine  production, 
and  performed  his  functions  with  signal  ability  and 
success,  took  advantage  of  this  union  to  apply  to 
production  the  same  idea  that  had  dominated  the 
creation  of  the  Liberty  motor,  viz.,  practicality. 
The  engine  had  been  designed  without  interference 
from  the  dreamers  and  Lieutenant  Emmons  in- 
tended to  have  it  produced  without  obstruction 
from  the  perfectists.  The  current  of  changes  or 


The  First  Liberty  Motors       95 

demands  for  changes  by  engineers  set  in  early  but 
Lieutenant  Emmons  soon  checked  it.  His  motto 
was  that  there  is  a  place  for  the  engineer  and  a 
place  for  the  producer — and  also  a  place  for  the 
engineer  to  stop  and  the  producer  to  begin.  He 
was  determined  that  only  absolutely  necessary 
changes  should  be  made  and  that  they  should  be 
the  result  of  joint  agreement  by  engineers  and  pro- 
ducers. In  consequence  Colonel  Deeds  issued  an 
order  concentrating  Liberty  motor  engineering  and 
production  control  in  the  Detroit  district,  thus 
taking  it  away  from  Washington  and  from  long- 
distance entangling.  Engineering,  production,  and 
inspection  were  all  brought  together  there  respon- 
sibly and  ultimately  in  the  hands  of  a  committee 
of  engineers  and  manufacturers  made  up  of  Maj. 
James  G.  Heaslet,  Henry  M.  Leland,  the  Cadillac 
veteran  and  the  Lincoln  motors  recruit,  C.  Harold 
Wills  of  the  Ford  Motor  Company,  Messrs.  Beall 
and  Roberts  of  the  Packard  Motor  Car  Company, 
D.  McCall  White,  of  the  Cadillac  Motor  Company, 
Walter  Chrysler,  general  manager  of  the  Buick 
Company,  and  Lt.  Col.  E.  J.  Hall,  one  of  the 
designers  of  the  engines.  Major  Heaslet,  who  was 
formerly  a  vice-president  of  the  Studebaker  Cor- 
poration, was  in  general  charge  as  district  manager, 
and  his  work  in  that  office  was  one  of  the  great 


96  Wings  of  War 

executive  feats  of  the  war.  Five  of  the  six  Liberty 
motor  contractors  were  within  a  short  distance  of 
his  office  and  consultations  were  easy  and  fre- 
quent. Engineering  and  production  thus  went 
together,  and  the  Liberty  motor  was  developed  and 
produced  from  half  a  dozen  plants  by  an  admir- 
able system  which  made  them  exactly  like  one 
great  plant  producing  something  new  of  its  own. 
The  head  and  the  body  were  together.  This  idea 
of  decentralization  into  strongly  authorized  dis- 
tricts came  later  to  be  taken  up  by  the  War  Depart- 
ment in  most  of  its  activities,  but  not  until  the 
narrow  idea  of  central  domination  and  scrutiny  of 
everything  from  tacks  to  transports  had  badly 
scrambled  production  in  many  lines. 

In  this  union  of  all  for  the  common  good,  the 
Packard  Company  became  the  sacrificial  goat,  gen- 
erally speaking.  It  pushed  on  a  little  ahead  of  the 
others  and  they  had  the  benefits  of  its  pioneering. 
It  was  mostly  the  Packard  that  did  and  undid  and 
wrought  and  unwrought.and  mapped  and  scrapped 
in  that  considerable  degree  of  development  of  the 
new  engine  that  was  overlapped  with  production. 
The  laboratory  the  Packard  Company  had  estab- 
lished in  connection  with  Colonel  Vincent's  two 
years  of  research  and  experimentation  peculiarly 
fitted  it  for  this  pioneering  work.  On  the  other 


The  First  Liberty  Motors       97 

hand,  the  superb  organization  of  the  Ford  Motor 
Company  especially  adapted  it  to  dealing  with 
peculiar  problems  of  production  in  regard  to  the 
new  motor.  So,  altogether  the  Liberty  motor 
went  into  production  as  auspiciously  as  it  had 
come  out  of  composition. 

The  event  proved  the  wisdom  of  the  conception 
and  the  soundness  of  the  design.  "In  approxi- 
mately one  year  from  the  time  it  was  originally 
designed,"  says  Maj.  L.  S.  Simons,  of  the  Air 
Service,  "and  in  spite  of  the  avalanche  of  criticism 
during  the  last  six  months  of  that  year,  it  became 
the  standard  motor  of  the  American  government 
and,  practically,  of  the  Allied  governments  as  well." 

While  Messrs.  Vincent  and  Hall  were  still  in  the 
midst  of  their  creative  task,  Mr.  Deeds  had  asked 
the  Aircraft  Production  Board  for  two  hundred 
and  fifty  thousand  dollars  for  the  development  of 
the  first  five,  each,  of  the  eight  and  twelve  engines. 
The  Board  was  skeptical  but  quickly  granted  the 
funds,  and  set  July  24th  as  the  time  limit  for  the 
delivery  of  the  first  engine.  This  was  on  June  4th. 
The  first  engine  arrived  in  Washington  on  July  3d. 

The  new  motor  was  at  first  designated  as  the 
American  or  the  United  States  motor,  but  Admiral 
Taylor  was  the  first  to  call  it  the  "Liberty  Motor" 
and  it  was  thus  christened  by  general  consent, 


98  Wings  of  War 

because  it  was  for  the  world-cause  of  Liberty  and 
it  was  no  single  man  or  nation's  motor.  It  was 
eclectic.  The  chief  features  of  the  Liberty  motor 
are  officially  described  as  follows : 

Cylinders — The  design  of  the  cylinders  for  the 
Liberty  engine  followed  the  practice  used  in  the 
German  Mercedes,  English  Rolls-Royce,  French 
Lorraine-Dietrich,  Italian  Isotti-Fraschini,  and 
others,  both  before  the  war  and  during  the  war. 
The  cylinders  were  made  of  steel  inner  shells  sur- 
rounded by  pressed  steel  water  jackets.  The 
Packard  Company  by  long  experiment  had  devel- 
oped a  practical  production  method  of  welding 
together  the  several  parts  of  a  steel  cylinder. 

Cam  Shaft  and  Valve  Mechanism  above  Cylinder 
Heads — The  design  of  the  above  was  based  on  the 
general  arrangement  of  the  Mercedes  and  Rolls- 
Royce,  but  had  been  improved  for  automatic 
lubrication  without  wasting  oil  by  the  Packard 
Motor  Car  Company. 

Cam-shaft  Drive — The  cam-shaft  drive  was  the 
same  general  type  as  used  on  the  Hall-Scott, 
Mercedes,  Hispano-Suiza,  Rolls-Royce,  Renault, 
Fiat,  and  others. 

Angle  between  Cylinders — In  the  Liberty  the 
included  angle  between  the  cylinders  is  45°. 
This  angle  was  adopted  to  save  head  resistance, 


The  First  Liberty  Motors       99 

to  give  greater  strength  to  the  crank  case,  and  to 
reduce  periodic  vibration.  This  decision  was  based 
on  the  experience  of  the  Renault  and  Packard 
engines  with  approximately  the  same  angle. 

Electric  Generator  and  Ignition — The  Delco 
system  of  ignition,  which  had  been  successfully 
used  on  hundreds  of  thousands  of  internal  com- 
bustion engines,  was  adopted,  a  special  design 
being  produced  for  the  Liberty  engine  to  provide 
a  reliable  double  ignition. 

Pistons — The  die-cast  aluminum  alloy  pistons 
of  the  Liberty  engine  were  based  upon  extensive 
research  and  development  work  by  the  Hall-Scott 
Company  under  service  conditions. 

Connecting  Rods — The  well-known  forked  or 
straddle-type  connecting  rods  as  used  on  the  De 
Dion  and  Cadillac  cars,  and  also  on  the  His- 
pano-Suiza  and  other  aviation  engines,  were 
adopted. 

Crank  Shaft — The  crank-shaft  design  followed 
the  standard  practice  for  large-bore  engines,  every 
crank  pin  operating  between  two  main  bearings  as 
in  the  Mercedes,  Rolls-Royce,  Hall-Scott,  Curtiss, 
and  Renault. 

Crank  Case — The  crank  case  followed  the  design 
of  the  Mercedes  and  Hispano-Suiza,  in  which  the 
crank  case  is  a  box  section  carrying  the  shaft  in 


ioo  Wings  of  War 

bearings  clamped  between  the  top  and  bottom 
halves  by  means  of  long  through  bolts. 

Lubrication — The  original  system  of  lubrication 
combined  the  features  of  a  dry  crank  case,  such  as 
in  the  Rolls-Royce,  with  pressure  feed  to  the  main 
crank-shaft  bearings,  and  scupper  feed  to  crank- 
pin  bearings,  as  in  the  Hall-Scott  and  in  some 
foreign  engines.  This  was  subsequently  changed 
to  add  pressure  feed  to  crank-pin  bearings,  as  in 
the  Rolls-Royce,  Hispano-Suiza,  and  other  engines. 

Propeller  Hub — The  propeller  hub  design  fol- 
lowed such  well-known  engines  as  the  Hispano- 
Suiza  and  Mercedes. 

Water  Pump — The  conventional  centrifugal  type 
of  water  pump  was  adapted  to  the  Liberty. 

Carburetor — The  Zenith  type  of  carburetor  was 
adapted  for  use  on  the  Liberty  engine. 

While  the  engineers  and  manufacturers  who 
contributed  to  the  Liberty  motor  engineering  and 
development  are  entitled  to  unstinted  recognition 
— and  there  has  been  some  controversy  concern- 
ing the  distribution  of  credit — it  is  but  fair  to  say 
that  to  Colonel  Deeds  is  to  be  assigned  credit  for  the 
creative  concept  and  decision  that  there  should  be 
a  standardized  American  motor  along  certain  well 
denned  and  tried  lines.  Without  that  far-reaching 
decision  there  would  have  been  no  Liberty  motor, 


The  First  Liberty  Motors      101 

but  only  adaptations  of  European  designs  and, 
probably,  a  multitude  of  individual  American 
designs,  which  would  have  resulted  in  the  Babel  of 
engines  that  cumbered  the  aviation  programs  of 
the  Allies. 


CHAPTER  XI 

LIBERTY  MOTOR  PRODUCTION 

THE  beginnings  of  Liberty  motor  production 
were,  indeed,  auspicious.  In  principle  and  intrin- 
sically it  continued  so.  Nevertheless,  within  four 
or  five  months  the  public  was  fearful  that  the  motor 
was  a  failure  and  was  convinced  that  chaos  char- 
acterized production  and  engineering.  This  pub- 
lic attitude,  which  resulted  in  bringing  aircraft 
production  into  such  great  disrepute,  was  based 
on  a  misconception  and  on  a  failure. 

The  misconception  was  in  the  inability  of  the 
public  to  grasp  the  fact  that  as  a  necessity  of  war 
development  and  production  were  coincidental  in 
the  case  of  the  Liberty  motor,  and  that  even  if 
development  could  have  preceded  production,  the 
latter  would  have  revealed  the  necessity  of  further 
alterations. 

The  failure  was  that  of  not  realizing  production 
in  accordance  with  the  schedule. 

The  public  was  overwhelmed  with  adverse  criti- 

102 


Liberty  Motor  Production     103 

cisms  of  the  motor  itself  and  its  parts  and  was  del- 
uged with  accounts  of  innumerable  alterations. 
At  the  same  time  it  was  disillusioned  as  to  the 
celerity  with  which  substantial  production  could 
be  attained. 

In  the  ordinary  course  of  bringing  out  a  new  and 
complex  mechanism  a  year  or  more  is  devoted  to 
what  is  known  as  development.  The  first  machines 
are  tested,  experimented  with,  severely  tried,  and 
altered  in  the  light  of  this  experience.  The  next 
step  is  production.  But  it  is  invariably  found  that 
development  must  in  some  degree  overlap  produc- 
tion. In  other  words  the  most  careful  preliminary 
tests  and  studies  do  not  reveal  all  the  weaknesses 
or  defects.  Production  is  often  far  advanced  when 
it  is  found  necessary  to  retrace  the  steps  and  make 
some  change  that  may  hold  up  production  on  the 
very  verge  of  shipment  or  even  after  shipment 
has  begun. 

The  plan  imposed  by  inexorable  war  upon  the 
aircraft  managers  and  makers  was  to  merge  devel- 
op nent  and  production.  They  all  knew  that  they 
hi  d  a  design  that  was  essentially  sound;  they  all 
knew  that  it  must  be  developed  by  experimenta- 
tion and  they  all  knew  that  this  development  must 
be  coincident  with  production.  This  was  the  only 
way  in  which  two  years  could  be  crowded  into  one. 


104  Wings  of  War 

It  was  expensive  and  tedious,  but  there  was  no 
other  way.  It  involved  changes  in  design  and  in 
the  strength  of  parts  and  the  wastage  in  some 
degree  of  parts  completed  or  in  process  of  manu- 
facture when  the  changes  were  found  necessary. 
A  third  class  of  alterations  was  the  consequence  of 
an  imposed  change  in  the  objective.  Production 
began  with  a  12-cylinder  engine  of  about  330  H.  P. 
Responding  to  the  best  advice  and  judgment  this 
objective  was  changed  during  production  to  375 
and  finally  to  400  H.  P.  Thus  there  were  three 
classes  of  changes : 

First :  In  design. 

Second :  Those  necessitated  by  increase  of  power. 

Third:  Changes  in  "manufacturing  limits." 

It  is  remarkable  that  there  was  only  one  change 
of  essential  design — that  in  only  one  case  was  the 
judgment  of  Messrs.  Vincent  and  Hall  set  aside. 
This  was  the  abandonment  of  the  scupper  system 
of  oil  "feed"  for  the  pressure  system.  Either 
system  gave  good  results  but  experience  showed 
that  the  pressure  system  was  better,  chiefly 
because  it  was  "foolproof."  This  change  was  not 
productive  of  great  delays  and  did  not  involve  the 
abandonment  of  the  motors  completed  at  the  time 
it  was  decided  upon. 

The  changes  necessitated  by  the  successive  de- 


Liberty  Motor  Production      105 

cisions  to  increase  power  were  entirely  extrane- 
ous to  design.  They  involved  considerable  delays. 
About  three  hundred  12-cylinder  engines  were  in 
production  when  the  horsepower  was  raised  from 
330  to  375.  This  necessitated  strengthening  var- 
ious parts,  chiefly  the  crank  shaft.  Several  hun- 
dred engines  of  this  power  were  delivered,  when  in 
response  to  the  insistent  demand  from  abroad  for 
still  more  power  the  change  was  made  to  400  H.  P. 
This  necessitated  the  strengthening  of  a  large  num- 
ber of  the  moving  parts  of  the  engine,  including 
the  crank  shaft,  connecting  rods,  bearings,  etc. 
The  changes  were  not  only  in  forrn  but  were  also 
metallurgical.  The  greatest  difficulty  and  the  most 
delay  of  all  these  power  changes  related  to  the  con- 
necting rods.  The  alteration  of  so  many  important 
parts  was  a  very  serious  matter,  involving  as  it  did 
changes  in  a  large  part  of  the  special  tools  of  which 
there  were  about  twenty-five  hundred  different 
kinds  and  as  many  as  ninety  thousand  altogether 
in  a  single  factory.  The  changes  in  equipment 
involved  changes  in  the  engine  plants,  the  forging 
shops,  the  parts  plants,  and  so  on  "clear  down  the 
production  line  to  the  producers  of  raw  materials." 
Such  sweeping  changes  were  inevitably  produc- 
tive of  disconcerting  delays.  In  the  last  analysis 
they  were  imposed  by  the  trend  of  aerial  warfare 


106  Wings  of  War 

as  determined  by  those  in  authority  at  the  front. 
It  is  a  moot  question  whether  the  additional  power 
was  worth  the  retardation  of  production  that  fol- 
lowed. It  might  have  been  better  to  have  had  two 
thousand  330  H.  P.  engines  in  May,  1918,  instead 
of  eleven  hundred  400  H.  P.  This  presumptive 
advantage  was,  however,  in  fact  offset  by  the 
greater  delays  in  the  production  of  the  'planes  that 
were  to  receive  the  engines.  Even  with  the  delays 
imposed  from  without  the  motor  manufacturers 
arrived  ahead  of  the  'plane  makers. 

The  most  numerous  changes,  those  relating  to 
manufacturing  limits,  were  but  trivial  in  their 
effect  on  production.  As  a  rule  they  were  changes 
in  dimensions  that  tended  to  facilitate  production 
rather  than  to  delay  it,  though  they  kept  the 
.draftsmen  and  the  tool-makers  busy.  They  were 
portentous  in  numbers  but  harmless  or  helpful  to 
speed  of  production. 

The  outstanding  fact  in  regard  to  change  is  that 
the  actual  delays  in  production  resulting  from 
driving  development  and  production  together  were 
insignificant.  Had  the  original  power  limits  been 
maintained  production  would  have  come  much 
closer  to  the  impossible  schedule.  The  outcome 
fully  justified  the  decision  to  put  the  new  engine 
into  production  regardless  of  development.  In 


Assembling  Liberty  Motors  at  the  Plant  of  the  Lincoln  Motor  Co. 


Section  of  Track  System  for  Machining  Upper  Half  of  Liberty  Motor  Crank 
Case,  Lincoln  Motor  Co. 


Liberty  Motor  Production      107 

truth  the  experience  with  the  Liberty  motor  in  this 
respect  was  marvelous.  It  is  commonly  lost  sight 
of  in  the  shadow  of  the  grand  total  of  delays,  but 
it  is  essential  to  keep  it  in  mind,  as  it  completely 
refutes  the  criticism  so  thickly  showered  upon  the 
aircraft  managers — that  they  had  made  a  vital  mis- 
take in  taking  up  the  production  of  a  new  engine 
on  a  large  scale. 

Altogether  outside  of  the  delays  that  resulted 
from  the  three  classes  of  alterations,  production 
fell  behind  schedule  for  many  reasons,  most  of 
which  flowed  from  the  lack  of  comprehension  of 
all  concerned  of  the  sweeping  changes  that  war  had 
wrought  in  all  industrial  conditions  and  because  of 
the  failure  of  the  manufacturers  to  perceive  how 
much  more  difficult  and  laborious  was  the  making 
of  a  high-power  aerial  engine  than  that  of  an  auto- 
mobile engine.  One  of  the  Liberty  motor  makers 
is  on  record  as  saying  that  it  was  their  optimism 
as  to  their  ability  to  achieve  that  deceived  them- 
selves and  the  whole  aircraft  organization.  This 
optimism  was  unfailing  and  continued  to  the  last. 
The  aim  was  high,  but  so  also  was  the  hit. 

But  when  these  facts  are  admitted,  the  other 
fact  must  also  be  conceded — that  with  all  its  delays 
piled  on  delays  the  delivery  of  eleven  hundred  com- 
pleted engines  within  one  year  from  the  day  that 


io8  Wings  of  War 

the  first  pencil  was  put  to  paper  in  the  beginning 
of  design  was  a  truly  remarkable  performance. 
It  was  matched  in  no  other  country  during  the  war. 

Even  with  the  simpler  manufacturing  processes 
of  Europe,  we  have  the  authority  of  the  British 
war  cabinet  for  the  statement  that  experience  shows 
that  as  a  rule,  from  the  date  of  conception  and 
design  of  an  aero  engine  "to  its  delivery  in  series 
by  the  manufacturer  more  than  a  year  elapses." 

Let  us  consider  the  difficulties  that  strewed  the 
path  of  the  makers  of  the  Liberty  engine.  In  the 
first  place,  existing  plants  did  not  have  machinery 
of  adequate  size  to  handle  the  parts  of  the  Liberty. 
This  necessitated  the  building  and  sometimes  even 
the  designing  of  new  machines.  These  machines 
required,  in  turn,  from  twenty-five  hundred  to 
three  thousand  different  tools,  jigs,  and  fixtures, 
which,  according  to  the  size  of  the  plant,  had  to  be 
multiplied  many  times.  The  making  of  the  im- 
mense number  of  tools  took  a  longer  time  than 
was  allotted.  Tool-makers  were  scarce  and  there 
was  a  tremendous  demand  for  their  services  and  of 
the  tool-making  shops  for  many  other  war  pur- 
poses. Then  it  developed  that  men  who  had  done 
very  well  as  automobile  engine  mechanics  were  not 
possessed  of  the  skill  required  for  work  on  the 
Liberty  motor.  They  had  to  be  re-trained  or 


Liberty  Motor  Production      109 

replaced  by  thousands  of  men  and  women  specially 
trained  for  the  work.  Many  skilled  men  were 
drafted  into  the  military  service.  It  was  difficult 
to  obtain  the  high  grade  of  materials  required  for 
such  a  light  and  powerful  machine  as  the  Liberty 
engine,  which  has  twenty-five  per  cent,  less  weight 
than  a  12-cylinder  automobile  engine  and  generates 
four  times  as  much  power.  Then  there  were  ex- 
ceptional fuel  and  power  shortages  and  distress- 
ing failures  of  railway  transportation  in  1917  and 
1918.  It  is  easy  to  mention  these  difficulties  but 
hard  to  appreciate  them.  They  were  so  baffling 
that  more  than  one  overworked  and  over  worried 
executive,  who  found  all  his  well-conceived  plans 
and  arrangements  thrown  into  an  absolute  chaos 
wherein  order  gave  way  to  disorder  and  routine  to 
a  succession  of  the  unexpected,  broke  down  and 
quit  his  post  in  despair. 

In  the  face  of  all  difficulties  production  from 
machine  tools  began  in  December,  1917,  with  twen- 
ty-two engines  and  gradually  grew  to  620  in  the 
following  May;  1 102  in  June;  1589  in  July;  2297  in 
August ;  2302  in  September,  and  3878  in  October. 
Up  to  November  29th,  eighteen  days  after  the 
armistice  was  signed,  the  total  production  of 
Liberty  motors  was  15,572,  and  it  eventually 
reached  20,478,  equivalent  to  more  than  eight  mil- 


no  Wings  of  War 

lion  H.  P.  When  the  war  ended  the  Liberty  engine 
program  had  been  extended  to  56,100  of  the  12- 
cylinder  and  8000  of  the  eight,  thus  giving  the  power 
that  insured  air  control  to  the  Allies.  This  enlarged 
program  was  necessary  to  meet  the  growing  require- 
ments of  our  army  and  navy  and  of  the  Allies.  The 
British  required  5500;  the  French  counted  on  tak- 
ing twenty  per  cent,  of  the  entire  output  and  the 
Italians  were  planning  to  take  a  large  quantity.  To 
meet  this  increased  demand  new  orders  had  been 
placed  with  the  plants  then  engaged  in  Liberty 
engine  production  and  with  the  Willys-Overland 
plants  at  Toledo  and  Elyria,  O.,  and  Elmira,  N.  Y., 
and  with  the  Olds  Motor  Company,  at  Lansing, 
Mich.  Of  the  completed  engines  (as  of  Novem- 
ber nth),  5323  were  delivered  to  airplane  manu- 
facturers for  installation  in  airplanes;  4511  were 
sent  directly  to  the  A.  E.  F.  in  France;  3742  were 
delivered  to  the  navy;  1089  were  sent  to  the  Allies 
and  907  to  the  training  fields.  When  John  D.  Ryan, 
as  Assistant  Secretary  of  War  in  charge  of  the  air 
service,  was  abroad  in  September,  1918,  he  prom- 
ised the  French  1500  engines  by  December  3ist 
and  750  a  month  during  the  first  six  months  of 
1919.  The  British  were  promised  an  additional 
thousand  a  month  during  the  early  months  of  the 
same  year. 


Liberty  Motor  Production      m 

An  idea  of  the  volume  of  production  already 
attained  may  be  received  from  the  fact  that  in 
October  the  output  of  Liberty  motors  was  at  the 
rate  of  150  a  day  for  every  working  day  in  the 
month,  whereas  the  rate  of  production  of  its  near- 
est rival  in  size  that  ever  got  into  real  production — 
the  Rolls-Royce — was  ten  a  day,  though  the  Rolls- 
Royce  was  in  production  years  before  the  Liberty 
was  dreamed  of.  During  1919  the  rate  of  produc- 
tion would  undoubtedly  have  passed  two  hundred 
a  day,  sufficient  to  have  supplied  the  Allied  armies 
with  an  amount  of  aerial  power  that  was  beyond 
the  remotest  possibility  of  German  production. 
//  is  hardly  necessary  to  add  that  the  record  made  in 
the  production  of  Liberty  engines  has  never  been 
even  remotely  touched  in  the  production  of  any 
like  complex  mechanism.  Indeed  no  other  motor 
program  than  its  own  ever  surpassed  this  actual 
achievement. 

It  is  one  of  the  bitter  ironies  of  history  that  the 
men  who  were  responsible  for  the  great  decision 
that  gave  us  the  Liberty  engine  have  so  far  had 
little  honor  and  much  obloquy.  The  public  tried 
and  condemned  them  and  the  manufacturers  early 
in  the  war — and  years  may  elapse  before  they  will 
get  their  dues.  One  of  them,  Colonel  Deeds, — the 
man  who  took  the  responsibility  of  decreeing  the 


Wings  of  War 

Liberty  motor, — was  even  in  the  shadow  of  court- 
martial  for  a  time  and  had  to  submit  to  the  humili- 
ation of  a  temporary  detachment  from  duty  just 
at  the  moment  when  his  decision  and  his  labors 
were  meeting  their  recognition  in  manufacturing 
and  military  results.  It  was  much  as  if  General 
Pershing  had  been  relieved  from  duty  while  the 
victorious  guns  of  St.  Mihiel  were  still  thundering 
the  proof  of  his  victory. 

It  is  an  illuminating  commentary  on  the  dis- 
couragements that  were  set  in  the  way  of  the 
designers  and  producers  of  the  Liberty  engine  that 
it  is  a  common  saying  in  aircraft  circles  that  for- 
eigners had  to  "sell"  it  to  us,  meaning  that  it  was 
appreciated  abroad  at  its  true  worth  before  it 
received  general  recognition  at  home.  Brig.  Gen. 
J.  D.  Cormack  of  the  British  War  Mission  in 
America,  in  a  speech  at  the  Army  and  Navy  Club, 
Washington,  December  20,  1918,  said:  "An  aero- 
plane is  much  more  complicated  than  it  looks.  It 
is  built  around  an  engine,  and  the  manner  in  which 
you  buckled  to  and  produced  a  really  good  engine 
is,  in  my  opinion,  the  finest  feat  in  design  and  pro- 
duction that  has  been  accomplished  during  the  war 
so  far  as  aircraft  matters  are  concerned.  You 
know  the  history  of  the  Liberty  engine  and  its 
fine  performances  in  aeroplanes  and  flying  boats 


Liberty  Motor  Production      113 

and  you  will  appreciate  how  greatly  you  and  all  the 
Allies  have  to  thank  Colonel  Deeds  for  his  efforts 
in  connection  with  its  design  and  production." 

The  British  Air  Ministry  adopted  the  Liberty 
engine  "in  the  first  line  of  high-powered  engines" 
in  June,  and  in  September,  1918,  it  reported  that 
in  the  same  'planes  the  Liberty  did  at  least  as  well 
as  the  Rolls-Royce.  Berkight,  designer  of  the 
French  Hispano-Suiza  engines,  stated  that  the 
Liberty  motor  was  superior  to  any  high-powered 
engine  developed  on  the  continent. 

The  Liberty  engine,  it  must  be  remembered,  is 
not  only  a  great  aerial  motor  and  the  best  high- 
power  motor  that  has  so  far  been  produced,  uniting 
a  minimum  of  weight  with  a  maximum  of  power, 
but  it  is  a  quantity  production  motor.  It  was 
believed  in  Europe  that  American  automatic 
machine  methods  of  manufacture  along  standard- 
ization lines  could  not  be  successfully  applied  to  so 
delicate  and  precise  a  mechanism  as  an  aerial 
motor.  American  manufacturing  processes  have 
therefore  achieved  a  brilliant  feat,  for  they  suc- 
ceeded in  pouring  out  of  their  factories,  in  an  un- 
ending procession,  motors  that  are  the  equal  of 
the  carefully  hand-made  engines  of  Europe.  It  is 
these  engines,  each  simply  one  of  a  quantity  and 
without  individual  tuning  and  perfecting,  that  are 


ii4  Wings  of  War 

now  filling  the  aviation  world  with  accounts  of 
their  triumph.  It  was  simply  a  Liberty  motor 
installed  in  a  De  Haviland  4,  also  a  quantity  pro- 
duction structure,  in  which  Capt.  E.  F.  White 
made  the  first  non-stop  flight,  on  April  19,  1919, 
from  Chicago  to  New  York  in  six  hours  and  fifty 
minutes,  a  distance  of  727  miles.  It  was  simply 
another  regular  Liberty  motor  and  another  De 
Haviland  4  which  Captain  Theodore  C.  McCauley 
used  in  his  record-breaking  flight  in  the  same 
month  from  Tuscon,  Ariz.,  to  Stillwater,  Texas,  880 
miles  in  a  little  over  eight  hours,  making  the  then 
world's  non-stop  record  flight.  In  both  cases  the 
motors  performed  perfectly  throughout  the  long 
hours  of  tremendous  strain.  The  supreme  triumph 
of  the  Liberty  motor  came  when  Commander 
Read,  U.  S.  N.,  in  the  navy  flying  boat  NC-4, 
equipped  with  four  Liberty  motors  (high  com- 
pression), completed  the  first  aerial  crossing  of  the 
Atlantic,  May  27,  1919.  It  was  a  DH-4  driven 
by  a  Liberty  motor  in  which  Lieutenant  Maynard 
won  the  transcontinental  airplane  race  from  New 
York  to  San  Francisco  and  return.  All  of  these 
engines  were  regular  "run-of -factory"  standard, 
quantity-production  machines. 

These  achievements  and  many  others  of  note 
are  the  final  and  sufficient  answer  to  the  indict- 


At  Work  on  Liberty  Engine  Parts  at  the  Packard  Plant 


Liberty  Motor  Production     115 

ments  made  against  the  Liberty  in  its  embryonic 
days.  The  American  aircraft  managers  set  out  to 
design  an  air  motor  of  great  power  that  was  sus- 
ceptible of  quantity  production  by  the  character- 
istic American  methods  of  machine-tool  utiliza- 
tion and  standardization  of  parts.  The  attained 
rate  of  output  of  150  a  day  justified  the  ambi- 
tion to  obtain  quantity  production;  the  brilliant 
and  solid  performances  of  individual  motors  on 
land  and  sea  and  under  every  condition  of  weather, 
climate,  and  altitude1  demonstrate  that  reliability 
and  efficiency  were  not  sacrificed  in  obtaining 
quantity. 

'It  was  in  an  American  built  Lepere  biplane  driven  by  a 
Liberty  engine  that  Major  R.  W.  Schroeder  made  the  world's 
altitude  record,  36,020  feet,  at  Dayton,  Feb.  26,  1920. 


CHAPTER  XII 

INCIDENTS  OF  LIBERTY  ENGINE  PRODUCTION 

THE  development  of  production  of  the  Liberty 
motor  was  accompanied  by  many  interesting  and 
ingenious  methods  of  speeding  up  manufacture. 
Each  of  the  six  companies  to  whom  production 
was  confined  at  the  moment  of  the  ending  of  the 
war,  has  its  own  collection  of  industrial  adventures 
and  achievements  in  connection  with  the  work, 
which  will  become  house  traditions.  Whatever 
anyone  discovered  immediately  became  the  prop- 
erty of  all.  The  Packard  Company  pioneered  and 
sacrificed  itself  for  all  and  discovered  many  mas- 
teries of  efficient  production,  but  perhaps  the  most 
spectacular  innovation  was  the  triumph  of  the 
Ford  Motor  Company  in  cylinder  forgings. 

The  enormous  number  of  steel  cylinders  that 
would  be  required  for  the  first  Liberty  motor  order 
of  22,500  machines,  which,  allowing  for  spares  and 
wastage,  would  run  to  more  than  three  hundred 
thousand,  was  dismaying  to  the  aircraft  managers 

116 


Liberty  Engine  Production     117 

and  was  the  one  feature  that  gave  them  pause  in 
their  early  optimism.  Hitherto,  the  light,  thin 
steel  aircraft  motor  cylinders  had  been  bored  out 
of  and  lathed  down  from  solid  steel  forgings.  A 
forging  weighing  140  pounds  was  thus  reduced  to 
a  finished  cylinder  weighing  only  seven  pounds. 
The  process  was  tedious  and  laborious.  The  need 
was  for  two  thousand  cylinders  a  day  when  pro- 
duction was  in  full  blast.  Anything  less  meant 
retarded  output. 

Colonels  Deeds  and  Waldon  decided  to  take  the 
problem  to  the  Ford  Motor  Company  because  of 
its  extensive  resources,  experience,  facilities,  and 
special  achievements  in  forgings.  Taking  with 
them  three  wooden  blocks  representing  the  size 
and  shape  of  the  forgings  from  which  the  cylinders 
were  then  being  made,  and  one  finished  cylinder, 
they  called  on  Henry  Ford  one  Sunday  afternoon  at 
his  home  in  Dearborn,  near  Detroit,  and  appealed 
to  him  for  help.  The  manufacturing  crisis  inter- 
ested Mr.  Ford.  He  offered  all  the  ingenuity  of 
his  organization  to  meet  it.  The  next  day  the  two 
officials  met  again  with  Mr.  Ford  at  the  offices  of 
the  Ford  Motor  Company.  With  them  were 
Messrs.  Mayo,  Wills,  Knudson,  and  Edsel  Ford  of 
the  Ford  staff  and  also  Henry  M.  and  W.  C.  Leland 
of  the  Lincoln  Motor  Company;  C.  F.  Kettering, 


ii8  Wings  of  War 

the  Dayton  automotive  engineer,  associated  with 
the  Dayton- Wright  Aircraft  Company ;  F.  F.  Beall 
and  Edwin  F.  Roberts  of  the  Packard  Company 
and  E.  J.  Hall,  one  of  the  designers  of  the  Liberty 
motor.  It  was  one  of  the  strongest  assemblages 
of  engineering  and  productive  ability  that  could 
have  been  brought  together  in  America.  Four 
suggestions  came  out  of  the  conference — then  the 
meeting  adjourned  and  the  whole  matter  was  left 
to  Henry  Ford. 

Three  weeks  later  Mr.  Mayo,  of  the  Ford  Com- 
pany, walked  into  Colonel  Deeds'  office  in  Wash- 
ington with  a  cylinder  forging,  made,  he  said,  by 
a  method  that  yielded  unhoped-for  speed.  One 
glance  at  the  forging  and  Mr.  Mayo's  assurance 
was  enough.  Instantly  Henry  Ford  was  called  on 
the  long  distance  and  asked  if  he  would  start  at 
once  to  make  two  hundred  thousand  cylinders. 

"Yes,"  was  the  answer. 

And  the  thing  was  as  good  as  done. 

Letters,  contract,  and  prices  followed  later.  It 
was  the  big  business  way  of  the  big  business  men 
who  were  running  things  in  those  days.  After 
manufacture  had  been  proceeding  long  enough  to 
estimate  costs,  Mr.  Ford  fixed  the  price  at  seven 
dollars  a  cylinder.  The  cost  by  the  other  method 
was  about  twenty-five  dollars. 


Liberty  Engine  Production     119 

Without  waiting  for  further  authority  the  Ford 
people  moved  from  their  plant  in  Windsor,  on  the 
Canadian  side  at  Detroit,  one  of  the  enormous 
presses  they  had  there — the  largest  machines  of 
the  kind  ever  built.  Then  they  tore  out  all  their 
regular  installations  in  a  whole  vast  section  of  their 
plant  and  turned  their  heaviest  machinery  on  to 
the  cylinder  job.  Money  was  spent  without  stint 
and  men  worked  without  saving  themselves  to 
rush  this  installation  to  conclusion. 

The  process  was  unique.  It  consisted  of  taking 
steel  tubing  of  the  requisite  diameter  and  cutting 
it  up  obliquely.  This  oblique  slice  supplied  the 
material  for  closing  the  valve-head  end  of  the 
cylinder.  The  sections  corresponding  to  the  cylin- 
ders that  were  to  be  were  then  put  through  the 
requisite  heat  treatment  and  forging.  The  result- 
ing forgings  were  not  very  much  heavier  than  the 
cylinders  that  were  eventually  ground  down  from 
them.  Almost  from  the  start  of  this  process  the 
Ford  Company  turned  out  hundreds  of  cylinders 
a  day,  against  a  maximum  of  151  by  the  old  process 
and  was  soon  making  as  high  as  two  thousand  a 
day.  It  is  estimated  that  the  three  weeks  the  Ford 
engineers  took  to  solve  the  problem  of  cylinder 
forgings  represented  a  saving  of  nine  months  in 
attaining  maximum  output  of  Liberty  motors. 


120  Wings  of  War 

From  that  time  on  the  Fords  made  the  cylinder 
forgings  for  all  the  Liberty  motor  makers — each  of 
them,  of  course,  finishing  the  forgings  in  his  own 
plant. 

It  is  easy  to  talk  of  profiteering  and  to  say  that 
all  who  fought  in  the  war  with  the  forge  and  the 
machine  fought  only  for  gain.  There  were  many 
greedy  profiteers,  but  one  of  the  fine  experiences 
of  the  war  for  those  who  were  in  the  press  of  the 
industrial  preparation  was  the  fact  that  patriotism 
and  the  desire  to  serve  at  any  cost  were  the  domi- 
nating motives  with  thousands  of  our  manufac- 
turers. In  no  effort  was  this  better  exemplified  than 
in  the  conception  and  production  of  the  Liberty 
motor.  The  spirit  of  sacrifice  was  shown  when  the 
two  engineers,  Hall  and  Vincent,  gave  up  their 
pride  of  name  and  firm  that  an  all- American  motor 
might  be  brought  forth.  Afterward  it  was  shown  in 
every  step  of  production.  Every  manufacturer  of 
the  "Liberty"  was  of  the  mind  of  "Uncle"  Henry 
Leland,  who  chose  aerial  engine-making  as  his  form 
of  service  even  before  war  was  declared,  and  des- 
pite his  seventy-five  years  made  a  record  of  accom- 
plishing greatly  in  a  short  time  that  might  stir  the 
emulation  of  vigorous  men  of  half  his  years.  Like 
the  Packard  Company,  with  Alvan  Macauley 
leading,  all  were  willing  at  any  time  to  suffer  that 


Liberty  Engine  Production     121 

the  common  cause  might  be  well  served.  For  the 
time  and  the  cause  they  ceased  to  be  rivals  and 
brought  together  much  of  the  best  engineering 
genius  and  productive  talent  in  America  to  do 
their  part  in  giving  to  the  Allied  cause  the  greatest 
of  aerial  motors. 

While  they  pooled  their  strength  and  their  skill 
they  did  not  shift  responsibility  from  the  individ- 
ual group.  Each  company  played  its  part  of  the 
game  with  more  energy  and  more  perseverance 
than  it  ever  played  its  own  private  trade  game. 
It  was  a  thankless  game,  too.  At  one  time,  when 
the  wind  of  public  opinion  sat  strongly  against  the 
Liberty  engine,  to  be  associated  with  it  was  to  be 
soiled  with  scandal.  It  was  a  service  of  dishonor 
rather  than  honor.  The  cloud  of  misunderstand- 
ings and  fallacious  judgments  that  resulted  from 
inevitable  delays  and  the  hullabaloo  raised  by 
investigations,  private  and  public,  journalistic  and 
official,  which  promoted  delay  rather  than  prog- 
ress, is  already  well  cleared  away.  Time  will  do 
full  justice.  Through  it  all  the  manufacturers, 
like  Colonel  Deeds  and  his  staff,  never  wavered  in 
their  faith  in  their  engine.  In  time  to  come  they 
will  point  to  their  loyal  work  on  the  great  motor 
as  the  noblest  achievement  of  their  careers. 


CHAPTER  XIII 
1 

"DEVELOPMENT  AND  PRODUCTION  OF  ENGINES 
OTHER  THAN  THE  LIBERTY 

BECAUSE  the  Liberty  was  the  outstanding  origi- 
nal feature  of  the  air  program  and  the  storm  of 
criticism  and  investigation  so  densely  raged  around 
it,  the  public  realized  little  of  what  was  being  done 
in  the  way  of  studying,  developing,  and  manufac- 
turing other  engines,  both  those  required  for  the 
rapidly  expanding  training  service  and  to  supple- 
ment the  Liberty  as  a  service  engine. 

Some  account  has  already  been  given  of  how 
the  Curtiss  engine,  the  0X5,  was  adopted  as  the 
engine  around  which  the  training  equipment  was 
built  up,  and  how  the  Hall-Scott  engine  was  used 
in  a  supplementary  way.  Also  there  has  been 
some  mention  of  the  three  foreign  engines  that 
were  put  into  production  in  this  country  primarily 
as  the  power  for  secondary  or  'advanced  training. 

It  was  the  first  intention  after  the  adoption  of 
the  Liberty  motor  idea  to  have  the  motor  made  in 
4,  6,  8,  and  12  cylinders,  thus  giving  every  degree 

122 


Engines  Other  than  the  Liberty  123 

of  power  that  might  be  required  for  the  different 
uses — all  the  way  from  training  to  the  highest  type 
of  single-  and  two-seater  pursuit  machines,  obser- 
vation, bombing,  etc. 

This  symmetrical  program,  realizing  as  it  did  the 
height  of  simplicity  and  standardization,  was  never 
fully  worked  out.  As  a  matter  of  fact  the  eight- 
cylinder  was  the  only  variation  from  the  standard 
12  ordered  in  production.  Both  the  four-  and 
six-cylinder  sizes  were  built,  tested,  and  proved  but 
had  not  been  put  in  production  on  the  signing  of 
the  armistice.  The  first  plan  was  to  put  a  large 
number  of  the  8's  into  production,  even  ahead  of 
the  I2's.  Then  on  advice  from  abroad,  the  ever- 
repeated  advice  in  favor  of  higher  power,  the 
eight-cylinder  was  given  up — only  to  be  returned 
to  during  the  closing  days  of  the  war.  When  the 
necessity  of  having  engines  of  intermediate  power 
became  apparent  with  changing  counsels  and 
changing  circumstances,  it  was  found  an  easier 
matter,  with  the  organization  concentrated  on  the 
Liberty  I2's,  to  fill  the  gap  with  Hispano-Suizas. 
So  preparations  were  made  with  the  Wright- 
Martin  Company  which  was  then  making  the  150 
H.  P.  Hispano-Suiza  to  take  up  the  22O-H.  P. 
model.  Then  reports  came  in  from  abroad  that 
on  account  of  troubles  arising  from  the  gearing  it 


124  Wings  of  War 

should  be  discontinued.  Another  shift  in  the  avia- 
tion wind  in  1918,  making  an  engine  of  300  H.  P. 
desirable  at  an  early  date  for  the  smaller  service 
'planes,  to  the  manufacture  of  which  we  were  then 
swinging  back,  resulted  in  an  order  for  10,000  of 
the  3OO-H.  P.  Hispano-Suiza  engines  which  had 
just  been  developed  abroad.  As  such  an  order  was 
quite  beyond  the  capacity  of  the  Wright-Martin 
plant  at  New  Brunswick,  the  government-owned 
plant  at  Long  Island  City,  formerly  belonging  to 
the  General  Vehicle  Company  was  leased  to  the 
Wright-Martin  Company  to  enable  it  to  handle  half 
of  the  order.  The  other  5000  were  placed  with  the 
Pierce- Arrow  Motor  Car  Company  of  Buffalo.  To 
assist  both  of  these  companies  in  their  heavy  task, 
the  entire  manufacturing  plant  and  facilities  of  the 
H.  H.  Franklin  Company  of  Syracuse,  New  York, 
were  placed  at  their  disposal .  These  large  Hispano- 
Suizas  would  have  gone  into  production  in  January, 
1919,  had  not  the  end  of  the  war  intervened. 

One  of  the  most  common  criticisms  of  the  man- 
agement of  aircraft  production  relates  to  the  Rolls- 
Royce,  the  excellent  British  motor.  It  is  not  gen- 
erally known  that  it  was  originally  the  fixed  inten- 
tion, and  a  very  persistent  effort  was  made,  to  put 
it  into  production  in  this  country,  notwithstanding 
the  great  difficulties  that  were  found  to  interfere 


Engines  Other  than  the  Liberty  125 

with  the  naturalization  of  any  foreign  machine  in 
American  factories.  It  is  possible  that  had  nego- 
tiations not  been  so  delayed  and  so  productive  of 
problems  the  Rolls-Royce  might  have  been  the 
high-power  engine  of  the  American  program.  It 
was  the  one  European  engine  of  high  power  that 
had  been  well  developed  when  the  United  States 
entered  the  war,  though  its  power  at  that  stage  of 
development  was  not  great  as  compared  to  the 
power  later  developed  by  the  Liberty  12.  To 
those  who  did  not  appreciate  the  difficulties  and 
time  required  to  put  a  foreign  engine  into  success- 
ful manufacture  in  the  United  States  it  always 
seemed  that  one  of  the  obvious  things  to  do  was  to 
produce  the  Rolls-Royce  in  the  United  States. 
At  one  time  there  was  a  fixed  intention  to  bring 
about  that  consummation.  Through  Lord  North- 
cliffe,  head  of  the  British  business  mission  in  the 
United  States,  arrangements  were  made  for  Mr. 
Claude  Johnson,  managing  director  of  the  Rolls- 
Royce  Company,  to  come  to  the  United  States 
with  competent  assistants,  samples,  drawings, 
specifications,  etc.,  in  order  to  prepare  for  the  man- 
ufacture of  his  engine  in  this  country.  The  first 
plan  was  for  Mr.  Johnson  to  make  an  arrangement 
with  the  Fierce-Arrow  Motor  Car  Company  for  it 
to  undertake  the  building  of  the  engine.  This  sug- 


i26  Wings  of  War 

gestion  was  not  well  received  by  Mr.  Johnson 
because  it  meant  turning  over  to  a  rival  manufac- 
turer, as  it  were,  the  inside  knowledge  and  experi- 
ence of  his  own  business.  After  the  war  the 
Fierce-Arrow  Company  might  conceivably  have 
turned  to  its  own  advantage  what  it  learned  in 
manufacturing  the  Rolls-Royce  aero  engine.  Mr. 
Johnson's  idea  was  for  the  United  States  to  acquire 
and  fully  equip  a  factory  and  hand  it  over  to  him. 
He  stipulated  that  the  factory  must  be  located  in  a 
good  labor  supply  center  and  within  a  suitable  dis- 
tance, having  in  mind  the  transportation  of  raw 
materials,  from  Pittsburgh.  Then  began  the  pur- 
suit of  the  ideal  factory.  If  the  Signal  Corps 
approved  of  one,  Mr.  Johnson  did  not,  and  the 
plants  that  were  satisfactory  to  Mr.  Johnson  were 
not  liked  by  the  Corps.  Weeks  of  such  negotia- 
tion dragged  into  months.  Meanwhile  the  Liberty 
engine  was  designed,  experimentally  built,  tested, 
and  approved;  and  by  that  time,  in  view  of  esti- 
mated outputs,  there  seemed  little  reason  for 
taking  up  the  Rolls-Royce.  Another  element  in 
the  Rolls-Royce  problem  was  the  fact  that  Mr. 
Johnson  wished  to  produce  at  first  his  190,  devel- 
oping 250  to  270  H.  P.,  seemingly  because  he  could 
bring  from  England  a  complete  set  of  jigs  and 
fixtures.  With  the  aid  of  these  he  thought  he 


Engines  Other  than  the  Liberty  127 

could  make  500  engines  by  the  end  of  the  fiscal 
year;  i.  e.,  June  30,  1918.  But  the  demand  of  the 
times  was  for  the  Rolls-Royce  270  rather  than  the 
190,  and  for  it  the  jigs  and  fixtures  would  have  to 
be  made  in  this  country,  thus  lengthening  the 
schedule  of  deliveries.  In  the  light  of  the  record 
made  in  the  manufacture  of  Liberty  motors  the 
final  decision  to  drop  the  Rolls-Royce  seems  to 
have  been  wise,  as  1000  Liberties  were  actually 
completed  a  month  sooner  than  Mr.  Johnson 
figured  on  completing  500  of  the  smaller  Rolls- 
Royce.  It  is  noteworthy,  too,  that  the  Liberty  12 
weighed  100  pounds  less  and  developed  about 
loo  H.  P.  more  than  the  larger  Rolls-Royce. 
It  is  now  plain  that  if  the  Rolls-Royce  had  finally 
been  put  into  production  in  America  the  net  result 
would  simply  have  been  the  output  of  a  machine 
whose  place  in  the  program  would  have  been  pre- 
viously met  by  the  Liberty  Motor  and  that  in 
doing  so  the  manufacturing  resources  of  the  coun- 
try would  have  been  overtaxed  to  such  an  extent 
that  neither  the  Liberty  nor  the  Rolls-Royce  would 
have  attained  quantity  production  at  anywhere 
near  the  time  the  Liberty  alone  did. 

The  Boiling  Commission  was  much  impressed 
with  the  Bugatti  engine,  which  it  found  in  the 
developmental  stage  in  France.  It  was  a  i6-cylin- 


128  Wings  of  War 

der  engine,  weighing  approximately  noo  pounds, 
and  was  built  around  a  small-caliber  cannon.  The 
Boiling  Commission  strongly  recommended  that  it 
be  put  into  production  in  the  United  States,  and 
that  it  be  pushed  side  by  side  with  and  just  as 
energetically  as  the  Liberty.  The  Duesenberg 
Motor  Corporation,  of  Elizabeth,  N.  J.,  was  ac- 
cordingly diverted  from  the  Liberty  and  turned  to 
the  Bugatti.  The  Fiat  plant  at  Schenectady, 
N.  Y.,  and  the  Herschell-Spillman  Company  of 
North  Tonawanda,  N.  Y.,  were  assigned  to  coop- 
erate with  the  Duesenberg  company.  However, 
when  the  sample  engine  arrived,  it  was  found  that 
owing  to  an  accident  during  a  test  in  France  it 
was  not  in  running  order.  Also,  the  French  me- 
chanics and  engineers  who  came  with  it  frankly 
admitted  that  the  design  and  development  of  the 
engine  had  not  been  completed  and  that  much  work 
remained  to  be  done.  Charles  B.  King,  one  of  the 
Signal  Corps  engineers,  was  assigned  to  this  work. 
It  took  months  to  re-design  the  engine  and  it  was 
just  getting  into  production  when  the  war  ended. 
Early  in  the  war  Mr.  Harbeck  of  the  Duesenberg 
company  suggested  a  plan  of  designing  and  build- 
ing an  engine  of  800  H.  P.  The  idea  met  with  the 
approval  of  the  authorities  and  the  Duesenberg 
company  was  authorized  to  build  four.  One  of 


Engines  Other  than  the  Liberty  129 

them  was  completed  before  the  armistice  was 
signed.  The  purpose  of  this  experiment  was  to 
keep  the  organization  thinking  in  terms  of  larger 
power  all  the  time.  The  Liberty  was  years  ahead 
of  any  other  engine,  it  appeared,  but  it  was  con- 
sidered wise  to  be  ready  for  further  advances. 
The  boldness  of  this  step  is  illustrated  by  the  fact 
that  technical  experts  had  just  figured  it  out  that 
it  was  not  practical  to  absorb  400  H.  P.  in  one 
high-speed  propeller,  though  the  Liberty  was  do- 
ing it.  Instead  of  accepting  their  conclusion  they 
were  asked  to  prepare  calculations  for  one  that 
would  go  with  the  8oo-H.  P.  engine. 

The  contracts  for  and  deliveries  of  other  engines 
than  the  Liberty  up  to  November  29,  1918,  are 
as  follows: 

CONTRACT 

TYPE  NUMBER    DELIVERED 

OXs 9,450  8,458 

A?-A 2,250  2,250 

Gnome 342  240 

Le  Rhone 3,900  1,298 

Lawrence 451  451 

Hispano-Suiza 

180  H.  P 4,500 

150  H.  P 4,000  4,100 

300  H.  P 10,000 

Bugatti 2,000  1 1 

Total 36,893  16,848 


130  Wings  of  War 

Including  the  Liberty  motors  (64,100)  the  orders 
for  engines  at  the  time  of  signing  the  armistice 
amounted  to  100,995 — which  were  to 'have  been 
completed  by  January  i,  1920,  or  thirteen  months 
after  the  cessation  of  hostilities.  There  were  deliv- 
ered 32,420  with  a  total  horsepower  of  more  than 
7,800,000.  Deliveries  were  somewhat  further  in- 
creased in  some  items  before  production  termi- 
nated, the  final  total  for  Hispano's,  for  example, 
being  6176. 

The  distribution  of  engines  completed  up  to 
November  29,  1918,  was  as  follows:  Of  the  train- 
ing engines  325  Le  Rhone  rotaries  went  to  the 
A.  E.  F.,  the  various  airplane  factories  received 
9069  of  different  kinds,  6376  of  them  were  sent  to 
the  training  fields,  and  515  Hispano-Suizas  went  to 
the  navy ;  of  the  combat  engines,  mostly  Liberties 
but  including  some  of  the  higher-power  Hispano- 
Suizas,  3746  were  delivered  to  the  navy,  1090  were 
taken  by  the  Allies,  941  were  sent  to  training 
fields,  and  5327  were  sent  to  'plane  plants  for  instal- 
lation in  airplanes. 

It  is  true  that  this  engine-making  achievement, 
great  as  it  is,  is  not  up  to  the  promise  of  the  rosy 
early  days.  In  general  the  full  realization  of  the 
early  program,  taking  engines  and  'planes  to- 
gether, would  have  come  in  about  twenty  months, 


Engines  Other  than  the  Liberty 

instead  of  the  hoped-for  twelve  months,  from 
July  I,  1917.  Yet,  as  John  D.  Ryan  recently 
pointed  out,  we  did  well  in  comparison  with  our 
allies  or  our  enemies.  "We  built  more  'planes," 
he  said,  "month  for  month,  from  the  time  we 
began  than  any  other  nation  in  the  war  built  from 
the  time  it  began.  We  had  more  engines  ready 
and  we  had  more  'planes  ready,  month  by  month, 
from  the  time  we  commenced  than  any  nation  in 
the  war  had  from  the  time  it  commenced."  The 
same  fact  may  be  stated  in  another  way  by  saying 
that  in  each  corresponding  period  of  time  in  our 
participation  in  the  war  we  produced  aircraft  in 
greater  volume  than  any  other  nation  in  it. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

CENTRALIZATION  OF  MANUFACTURING 
RESPONSIBILITY 

ONE  of  the  fixed  ideas  of  the  early  nebulous 
stage  of  the  American  aircraft  program  was  that 
of  brevity  in  respect  to  the  list  of  machines  that 
should  be  manufactured.  There  were  to  be  but 
few  types  of  engines  and  'planes — and  the  engines 
were  to  be  as  far  as  possible  modifications  of  a 
standard  type. 

This  was  exactly  the  reverse  of  the  French  and 
British  method  of  procedure.  With  them  each 
manufacturer  was  allowed  to  go  ahead  almost 
independently  with  his  own  conceptions.  It  has 
been  asserted  that  while  the  American  method  had 
its  advantages,  it  also  had  the  disadvantage  that 
it  tended  to  check  development  and  invention  and 
practically  relegated  them  to  the  official  organi- 
zations. Doubtless  this  was  true  in  a  degree,  but 
one  of  the  offsets  was  that  in  some  measure  all  of 
the  available  engineering  talent  of  the  country  was 

132 


Manufacturing  Responsibility  133 

united  and  concentrated  on  the  lines  the  aircraft 
organizers  sought  to  lay  down.  If  there  had  been 
more  aeronautical  engineering  ability  in  this  coun- 
try at  the  beginning  of  the  war  it  might  not  have 
been  necessary  to  concentrate  it  to  so  great  a 
degree  as  it  was  along  the  lines  laid  down  by  the 
government. 

Both  the  aeronautical  engineers  and  the  existing 
aircraft  plants  had  to  be  carefully  conserved.  Far 
from  being  ignored,  they  were  zealously  cultivated, 
though  not  always  in  the  ways  they  preferred. 
Doubtless  some  of  the  small  plants,  simply  because 
they  were  called  aircraft  plants,  thought  that  even 
the  Liberty  motor  should  have  been  entrusted  to 
them,  rather  than  to  the  highly  organized  and 
amply  equipped  automobile  manufacturers — the 
great  internal  combustion  engine  designers  and 
builders  of  America. 

The  automobile  manufacturers  besides  being 
most  proficient  in  the  designing  and  making  of 
internal  combustion  engines  had  the  decisive  ad- 
vantage of  organizations  and  plants  that  lead  the 
world  in  the  excellence  and  capacity  of  their  quan- 
tity production  methods.  One  of  the  most  irra- 
tional criticisms  of  the  aircraft  managers  that  was 
made  in  the  hectic  early  days  of  the  war  was  that 
they  had  entrusted  the  building  of  aerial  motors 


134  Wings  of  War 

to  the  manufacturers  of  automobile  motors.  The 
authors  of  this  criticism  did  not  point  out  what 
American  industry,  in  the  absence  of  an  extensive 
and  highly  specialized  aerial  motor  industry, 
should  build  aeroplane  motors  if  not  the  makers  of 
automobile  motors.  In  France,  England,  Italy, 
Germany — everywhere — the  automobile  manufac- 
turers have  inevitably  evolved  into  producers  of 
aircraft.  The  conversion  of  a  number  of  the  superb 
automobile-making  plants  of  the  country  to  the 
making  of  Liberty  and  other  motors  and  of  'planes 
was  one  of  the  notably  logical  industrial  mobili- 
zations of  the  war. 

The  aeronautical  engineers  .were  utilized,  as  a 
rule,  not  by  bringing  them  to  Washington  or  to 
the  engineering  headquarters  at  Dayton,  but  in 
conjunction  with  their  own  existing  plants  or  some 
that  were  later  built  up  around  them.  The  exist- 
ing plants  that  amounted  to  anything  were  divided, 
in  the  first  place,  between  the  army  and  navy. 
In  magnitude  the  army  aviation  effort  was  so  much 
in  excess  of  the  navy's  that  it  may  have  been  over- 
looked that  the  Aircraft  Board  had  always  to  make 
equitable  provision  for  the  latter. 

To  the  navy  were  assigned  exclusively  the 
Burgess  factory  at  Marblehead,  the  Aeromarine 
plants  at  Nutley  and  Keyport,  N.  J.,  and  the 


Manufacturing  Responsibility  135 

Boeing  plant  at  Seattle.  The  enlarged  Curtiss 
plants  were  used  for  both  army  and  navy  work 
and  the  Standard  Aircraft  Corporations'  plant  at 
Elizabeth,  N.  J.;  the  Thomas-Morse  Aircraft  Cor- 
poration, Ithaca,  N.  Y.;  the  Wright-Martin  Air- 
craft Corporation,  Los  Angeles,  and  the  Sturtevant 
Aeroplane  Company  of  Boston  were  turned  over 
to  the  army. 

The  engineering  tasks  were  roughly  assigned  in 
the  following  manner :  To  Glenn  Curtiss  and  the 
engineering  staff  of  the  Curtiss  company  the 
JN-4-D  and  the  development  of  the  drawings  and 
the  manufacture  of  the  French  Spad — the  single- 
seat  chasse  machine  which  was  early  adopted  as 
the  type  of  single-seater  fighter  that  would  be  put 
into  production  in  this  country.  Later  the  Curtiss 
company  got  the  unfortunate  Bristol  two-seater 
fighter  and  finally  the  U.  S.  E>9-A,  that  was 
intended  to  take  the  place  of  the  Bristol. 

A  new  company,  the  Dayton- Wright  Airplane 
Company,  was  encouraged  to  build  up  around  the 
nucleus  of  Orville  Wright  and  engineers  and 
trained  mechanics  associated  with  him,  and  to  it 
was  assigned  the  development  and  pioneering  of 
the  De  Haviland  4  with  the  Liberty  motor  as 
power. 

Originally  the  Signal  Corps  Engineering  Depart- 


136  Wings  of  War 

ment  was  assigned  to  the  Bristol  but  the  latter 
part  of  that  development  was  transferred  to  the 
Curtiss  company. 

The  Thomas-Morse  corporation,  with  B.  D. 
Thomas  at  the  head  of  its  engineering,  was  assigned 
to  the  development  of  a  rotary  motor  advance 
training  'plane,  and  later,  a  chasse  machine. 

Grover  C.  Loening  was  instructed  to  develop  a 
two-place  fighter. 

Glenn  L.  Martin  was  told  to  develop  a  two- 
engine  bomber. 

Lewis  &  Vought  were  told  to  develop  an  advance 
training  'plane  under  the  guidance  of  C.  M.  Vought. 

Several  orders  for  experimental  machines  were 
also  placed. 

This  seemed  like  a  rational  and  simple  arrange- 
ment, but  the  admitted  fact  is  that  engineering 
confusion  ensued  in  'plane  manufacture.  "The 
engineering  confusion  which  followed  the  program 
throughout  the  first  year,"  says  an  official  state- 
ment, "must  be  frankly  admitted."  It  somehow 
seemed  impossible  to  introduce  into  the  engineering 
of  the  'planes  the  orderly  method  that  governed  the 
development  of  the  Liberty  motor.  That  was  partly 
due  to  the  fact  that  it  was  an  American  design  and 
did  not  wait  upon  foreign  counsel ;  it  was  also  due 
to  the  fact  that  an  engine  was  a  complete  unit  in 


A  Curtiss  Training  Plane  at  Kelly  Field 

U.  S.  Air  Service  Photo 


Elmwood  Plant  of  the  Curtiss  Aeroplane  and  Motor  Corporation,  Buffalo,  New 

York,  Erected  Exclusively  for  War  Airplane  Work,  and 

Employed  15,000  Persons 


Manufacturing  Responsibility  137 

itself  and  did  not  have  to  be  considered  with 
respect  to  numerous  accessories.  But  above  all 
there  were  highly  organized  industrial  facilities  for 
engine  production  which  did  not  exist  for  'planes. 
In  the  case  of  the  'planes  there  was  also  the  diffi- 
culty of  a  lack  of  definite  knowledge  of  just  what 
was  required  and  the  further  complication  of  deter- 
mining upon  and  designing  the  accessories,  as 
well  as  providing  for  their  manufacture  from  the 
ground  up  in  many  instances,  at  the  same  time 
that  the  'planes  were  being  designed.  A  place 
for  each  of  the  accessories  had  to  be  found,  but  it 
was  never  certain  just  how  many  kinds  of  them 
there  would  be,  because  of  our  varying  demands 
from  the  front.  On  the  other  hand  the  accessories 
had  to  be  adapted  to  the  limitations  of  space 
in  the  cockpit,  in  the  engine  compartment  or  the 
landing  gear,  or  on  the  outside  of  the  fuselage. 
Doubtless,  at  some  point  someone  should  have 
been  able  to  step  in  and  say  that  a  certain  num- 
ber of  machines  should  have  such  and  such  an 
equipment,  leaving  additions  and  improvements 
to  a  following  series.  But  the  early  general  air 
service  organization  seemed  to  make  this  impos- 
sible. The  engineers  felt  constrained  to  look  upon 
a  request  from  the  A.  E.  F.  as  an  order — so, 
much  time  was  wasted  in  trying  to  overtake  an 


138  Wings  of  War 

objective  that  moved  forward  as  rapidly  as  it  was 
approached.  Whether  there  was  in  America  at 
the  time  we  entered  the  war  any  potentiality  of 
an  organization  that  could  have  avoided  confusion 
is  doubtful.  Order  in  procedure  is  primarily  based 
on  a  clear  conception  of  what  is  to  be  done  and 
on  the  existence  of  a  supreme  authority  that  can 
steadily  direct  progress  toward  the  objective.  It 
is  noteworthy  that  even  in  England  where  the 
aircraft  organization  was  further  advanced  at  the 
time  England  entered  the  war  than  it  was  with  us 
when  we  went  in,  a  similar  confusion  prevailed  for 
over  two  years. 

The  general  policy  of  simplicity  also  governed 
the  choice  of  manufacturers.  There  were  thou- 
sands of  applicants  for  contracts — and  from  one 
point  of  view  it  seemed  that  the  thing  to  do  was  to 
start  everybody  who  offered  on  some  sort  of  air- 
craft production.  This  policy  was  not  followed 
because  Colonel  Deeds  understood  that  American 
manufacture  was  of  the  quantity  kind  and  could 
not  adapt  itself  to  a  multiplicity  of  participants  as 
the  group  manufacturing  methods  of  Europe  did. 
Hundreds  of  the  applicants  were,  however,  pains- 
takingly investigated  but  the  majority  of  them 
were  found  hopelessly  unfit  for  the  task.  Many  of 
them  felt  that  they  had  a  grievance — and  it  was 


Manufacturing  Responsibility  139 

therefore,  easy  for  their  sympathizers  to  complain 
that  but  a  small  percentage  of  the  potential  air- 
craft production  of  the  country  was  being  utilized, 
whereas  the  real  difficulty  was  to  make  effective 
use  of  the  facilities  of  the  plants  that  were  enlisted. 
One  of  the  aspirants  for  'plane  manufacture  was  a 
stone  quarry  company  and  there  were  many  others 
almost  as  impossible.  As  a  rule,  original  contracts 
were  put  into  a  few  responsible  hands.  The 
holders  of  these  contracts  then  contracted  second- 
arily for  those  parts  they  did  not  make  in  their 
own  plants — as  well  as  for  materials.  In  the  end 
over  three  hundred  plants  and  more  than  two 
hundred  thousand  work-people  were  engaged  in 
the  making  of  'planes  and  accessories. 

As  the  delays  in  production  were  chiefly  due  to 
engineering  confusion,  it  is  now  easy  to  see  that 
the  situation  would  have  been  indescribably  cha- 
otic if  the  plants  affected  had  been  much  more 
numerous  than  they  were.  They  had  ample  capac- 
ity but  the  engineering  jam  held  them  back.  The 
same  policy  of  concentration  in  the  hands  of  the 
strong  gave  us  engines  in  abundance  before  it  gave 
us  'planes. 

In  considering  this  subject  it  is  necessary  to  bear 
in  mind  that  in  the  automobile  industry  we  had  in 
America  a  great  body  of  trained  builders  of  internal 


140  Wings  of  War 

combustion  engines  of  which,  after  all,  an  aero  motor 
is  only  a  specially  refined  and  adapted  type.  The 
builders  of  the  'planes  were  generally  without  cor- 
responding experience  and  their  work-people  were 
without  training,  and  yet  it  was  their  task  to  fit 
the  new  engines  to  the  'planes  and  also  properly 
place  in  them  numerous  sorts  of  equipment  appa- 
ratus which  never  ceased  to  grow  in  number  and 
complexity.  Thus,  in  a  way,  it  may  be  said  that 
most  of  the  elemental  difficulties  of  producing  fin- 
ished combat  aeroplanes  piled  up  in  the  aeroplane 
factories  where  the  'planes  proper,  the  motors,  and 
the  accessories  were  assembled  into  the  function- 
ing whole.  In  the  same  manner  they  had  to  bear 
the  brunt  of  the  delays  and  alterations  of  all  kinds 
that  affected  motors  and  other  equipment.  That 
this  point  is  well  taken  is  supported  by  the  com- 
parative ease  and  rapidity  with  which  the  manufac- 
turers of  training  'planes  attained  volume  produc- 
tion. The  latter  merely  had  to  build  or  build  and 
assemble  simple  'planes  and  engines  and  had  little 
or  no  engineering  or  pioneering  developmental 
work  to  do.  They  merely  traveled  along  a  sepa- 
rate and  well-beaten  path.  Their  brethren  of  the 
combat  'planes,  however,  had  all  of  the  problems 
of  the  adaptation  of  foreign  'planes  and  then  had 
to  wait  on  the  solutions  by  their  predecessors  in 


Manufacturing  Responsibility 

the  line  of  production  of  all  their  problems  of  origi- 
nation and  adaptation. 

Another  step  toward  simplification  that  was 
early  taken  was  the  matter  of  patents  and  royal- 
ties. It  was  clear  that  if  American  manufacturers 
were  to  pool  their  efforts  for  the  common  good 
some  equitable  arrangement  for  common  access 
to  all  existing  rights  must  be  obtained.  Permission 
to  use  these  rights  could  not  be  left  to  the  disorder 
of  individual  bargaining,  with  its  delays,  disap- 
pointments, and  general  tendency  to  result  in 
excessive  cost.  Howard  E.  Coffin  and  S.  D. 
Waldon  took  the  initiative  in  this  matter  several 
months  before  war  was  declared  and  succeeded 
in  getting  an  Aircraft  Manufacturers'  Association 
formed  around  a  so-called  cross-licensing  agree- 
ment that  was  at  one  time  the  cause  of  much  criti- 
cism. It  is  important  to  note  that  the  initiative 
came  from  the  government,  and  that  the  motive 
was  most  laudable — the  purpose  being  to  serve  the 
common  cause  in  an  equitable  manner  without 
doing  injustice  to  the  pioneers  of  the  industry  who 
held  the  basic  patents  as  well  as  desirable  designs 
and  processes  of  manufacture.  All  members  of  the 
association — and  membership  was  open  to  any 
legitimate  manufacturer — had  the  privilege  of 
using  the  basic  patents  on  the  payment  of  a  cer- 


i42  Wings  of  War 

tain  sum  for  each  commercial  machine  turned  out 
and  half  as  much  for  each  government  machine. 
The  solution  of  the  inter-relations  of  manufac- 
turers thus  arrived  at  eliminated  all  patent  litiga- 
tion which  at  one  time  was  threatening  untoward 
complications  and  gave  just  recognition  of  the 
pioneering  work  that  was  so  necessary  to  the  suc- 
cess of  the  aircraft  program. 

The  rights  to  European  designs  of  engines  and 
'planes  were  dealt  with  through  the  Allied  govern- 
ments. Enterprising  Americans  as  well  as  for- 
eigners saw  a  chance  to  make  an  honest  penny  or 
mayhap  a  million  or  two  by  acquiring  the  Amer- 
ican rights  of  foreign  'planes  and  engines.  Many 
of  the  machines  thus  covered  did  not  interest  the 
American  producers  but  among  them  were  the 
"Clerget"  engine,  recommended  by  the  Joint 
Army  and  Navy  Technical  Board  for  use  in  train- 
ing 'planes ;  the  Sopwith,  also  favorably  considered ; 
the  "Sunbeam,"  not  favorably  considered,  and 
such  desired  rights  as  those  of  the  Caproni,  Gnome, 
Le  Rhone,  and  Handley-Page.  The  valuation 
placed  on  these  rights  made  the  figures  of  the  cross- 
licensing  agreements  with  American  manufac- 
turers look  absurdly  small.  As  the  election  of 
foreign  types  was  left  to  the  Boiling  Commission 
this  matter  of  royalties  was  also  left  to  it  and  it 


Manufacturing  Responsibility  143 

settled  it  on  the  sensible  basis  of  free  interchange 
of  rights  between  governments,  leaving  each 
government  to  deal  with  the  rights  of  its  own 
designers.  The  two  exceptions  to  this  practice 
were  the  negotiations  with  the  Rolls-Royce  com- 
pany and  the  three  French  engines  and  'planes 
that  were  selected  through  Major  Tulasne  of  the 
French  military  mission  at  Washington. 


CHAPTER  XV 

THE  WRESTLE  WITH  THE  'PLANES 

THE  uncertainty  as  to  what  to  undertake  in  this 
country  in  the  way  of  service  'planes  resolved  it- 
self in  August,  1917,  on  instructions  from  abroad, 
into  a  general  determination  to  adopt  the  De 
Haviland  4  as  the  type  for  reconnaissance,  with 
secondary  functions  as  a  day-bomber  and  a  defen- 
sive bi-place  fighter.  The  Bristol  two-seater  was 
adopted  as  the  type  for  the  two-seater  fighter  and 
the  Spad  as  the  single-seater  chasse  machine.  By 
that  time,  too,  the  Boiling  Commission  was  begin- 
ning to  get  a  very  clear  view  of  the  engine  situation 
and  had  cut  its  immediate  production  recommen- 
dations down  to  only  the  Rolls-Royce,  the  Gnome, 
and  the  Le  Rhone  of  foreign  engines. 

The  De  Haviland  4  was  the  first  foreign  service 
'plane  to  reach  this  country.  It  was  a  seven  days' 
wonder  in  Washington,  where  it  arrived  in  the  lat- 
ter part  of  July,  even  though  it  came  without 
engine,  ordnance,  and  the  operating  equipment. 

144 


w 

Q 

.s 


•a 


bo 

.9 

i 


The  Wrestle  with  the  'Planes  145 

Incomplete  as  it  was,  it  was  the  first  service  'plane 
to  reach  America.  It  had  to  be  redesigned  to  take 
the  Liberty  engine  and  altered  to  suit  the  Marlin 
and  Lewis  machine  guns,  four  in  all,  and  finally 
shaped  and  stretched  to  hold  a  host  of  accessories, 
the  number  of  which,  it  seemed  to  the  despairing 
engineers,  never  ceased  to  grow. 

The  aircraft  managers  then  got  their  first 
glimpse  of  the  troubles  that  were  ahead  of  them. 
Accustomed  to  American  practice,  they  had  con- 
sidered that  with  regard  to  the  foreign  machines, 
engineering  would  be  the  least  of  their  difficulties. 
The  naked  De  Haviland  4  and  the  incomplete 
drawings  that  followed  it  opened  their  eyes.  This 
sample  arrived  at  Dayton,  Ohio,  on  August  18, 
1917,  and  was  turned  over  to  the  Dayton-Wright 
Airplane  Company  for  study  and  reproduction. 
The  first  American-made  DH-4,  without  equip- 
ment, took  the  air  with  a  12-cylinder  Liberty 
motor  October  29th.  It  gave  perfect  satisfaction 
from  the  first;  and  patched  up  from  time  to  time, 
with  the  tireless  Howard  M.  Rinehart  as  operator, 
this  veteran  "Canary, "  as  it  came  to  be  known  on 
account  of  its  color,  was  the  operating  subject 
through  all  the  long  struggle  that  followed  to  get 
more  things  into  the  'plane  than  there  was  room 
for.  The  fact  that  the  first  'plane  was  ready  so 


146  Wings  of  War 

soon — even  though  it  was  not  a  machine-made 
one — and  the  other  fact  that  quantity  production 
from  a  well-organized  and  ably  directed  plant  was 
not  in  full  swing  until  the  following  April  tells  the 
tale  of  the  accessories.  But  for  them  and  their 
baffling  problems  of  design,  location,  and  manu- 
facture the  'planes  should  have  been  coming  out 
in  quantities  much  faster  than  the  engines,  whereas 
in  fact,  it  was  the  other  way  about.  It  is  hopeless 
to  convey  any  idea  of  the  exasperating  nature  of 
the  complications  with  respect  to  them.  The  task 
would  have  been  simple,  indeed,  had  it  been  merely 
the  matter  of  duplicating  a  foreign  machine  with 
each  accessory  in  its  place,  complete  drawings,  and 
the  accessories  available.  The  latter  were  the  cur- 
rent by-product  of  aerial  warfare.  Mostly,  they 
were  entirely  new  to  America — all  the  way  from 
suitable  photographic  apparatus  to  machine  gun 
synchronizers.  Besides,  each  morning's  cable- 
grams brought  some  more  recommendations  either 
for  additional  accessories  or  variations  of  those 
already  adopted.  And  always  there  was  a  warning 
that  'planes  without  these  up-to-the-minute  de- 
vices would  be  antiquated  before  they  reached 
Europe.  During  these  intense  and  critical  days 
the  storm  of  criticism  and  investigation  was  at 
its  height  and  reorganizations  were  adding  to  the 


General  Arrangement  of  Throttle  and   Gas   Control,  and   Other 

Instruments  in  Pilot's  Cockpit  of  a  DH-4.     The  Numerous 

Installations  in  a  Limited  Space  were  a  Hard  Problem 

for  the  Designers 

U.  S.  Air  Service  Photo 


The  Wrestle  with  the  'Planes  147 

burdens  of  the  aircraft  managers;  all  of  which 
took  up  the  time  and  diverted  the  energies  of  those 
in  charge  to  the  point  of  discouragement  and  de- 
moralization. By  this  time  also  army  organiza- 
tion was  beginning  to  get  its  grip  on  the  civilian 
method  of  doing  business  and  was  crushing  it  into 
the  rigid  and  angular  process  of  government  rou- 
tine plus  military  stiffness.  The  De  Haviland  4 
had,  too,  all  the  familiar  troubles  of  inaccurate, 
partial,  and  incomplete  foreign  drawings.  Manu- 
facturing drawings,  in  the  American  sense  of  com- 
pleteness and  detail,  do  not  seem  to  exist  in 
Europe.  At  least  that  was  the  conclusion  our  air- 
craft manufacturers  arrived  at.  The  fact  is  that 
the  European  system  of  individual  work  and  a 
small  measure  of  standardization  do  not  require  it. 
If  this  difference  in  practice  had  been  understood 
sooner,  there  would  not  have  been  so  much  confi- 
dence as  to  early  'plane  production.  The  actual 
manufacture  of  'planes  was  not  considered  as  diffi- 
cult as  that  of  engines.  The  motor  is  a  complex 
power  producing  machine,  with  hundreds  of  mov- 
ing parts,  whereas  the  'plane  for  all  its  forty  thou- 
sand parts  is  a  rigid  structure;  and  it  was  believed 
that  in  view  of  the  fact  that  the  body  was  largely 
of  wood  and  cloth  and  the  metallic  parts  easily 
adapted  to  machine  production  it  would  not  be 


148  Wings  of  War 

difficult.  Incomplete  and  unsatisfactory  draw- 
ings, which  necessitated  the  making  of  thousands 
of  new  drawings  from  the  model,  the  problem  of 
placing  the  ever-accumulating  and  ever-changing 
accessories  and  changes  incidental  to  adaptation  to 
the  Liberty  motor  dispelled  the  dream  of  an  easy 
job.  So,  in  the  end  the  naturalized  foreign  'planes 
came  through  more  slowly  than  the  home-born 
Liberty  motor.  This  fact  suggests  the  possibility 
that  a  naturalized  foreign  motor  might  have  been 
relatively  much  longer  in  reaching  production. 

The  De  Haviland  4  was  officially  released  for 
production  in  April  and  the  Dayton-Wright  Com- 
pany thereafter  lived  up  to  its  manufacturing 
schedule.  In  June  it  was  turning  out  fifteen  com- 
plete machines  a  day — guns,  accessories,  and  all — 
and  in  August  completed  its  thousandth  machine 
on  time.  When  the  armistice  was  signed  it  had 
realized  the  unprecedented  rate  of  forty  complete 
'planes  a  day.  More  than  two  thousand  'planes  of 
its  make  were  in  or  on  the  way  to  France  when  hos- 
tilities ceased.  The  Fisher  Body  Company,  Detroit, 
had  attained  an  output  of  thirty -five  De  Havilands 
daily.  When  De  Haviland  4  production  ceased  in 
December  there  had  been  turned  out  by  all  makers 
4587  machines,  practically  all  in  eight  months. 

The  first  DH-4's  had  their  faults  and  imperfec- 


The  Wrestle  with  the  'Planes   149 

tions  and  the  experience  of  actual  military  use 
resulted  in  alterations  and  improvements  by  the 
aviation  shops  in  France  and  like  changes  in  the 
manufacturing  plants  at  home,  but  this  did  not 
interfere  with  production  and  was  all  part  of  the 
interminable  game  of  keeping  up  with  the  daily 
lessons  of  experience  at  the  front. 

Maj.  A.  A.  Cunningham,  commandant  of  the 
Aviation  Section  of  the  U.  S.  Marine  Corps,  in 
telling  of  the  excellences  as  well  as  the  defects  of 
the  American  DH-4's,  as  used  by  the  marines  in 
cooperation  with  the  British  service,  says  that 
they  were  so  much  faster  than  the  British  DH-4*s 
equipped  with  the  BHP  motor  that  they  found  it 
very  difficult  to  stay  in  formation  with  the  latter. 
This  difficulty  was  overcome  by  throttling  down 
the  Liberty  motor  and  carrying  only  about  one 
half  the  regular  weight  of  bombs.  Even  in  flying 
with  the  'planes  using  Rolls-Royce  Eagle-8  motors, 
it  was  found  desirable  for  the  latter  to  carry  a 
smaller  weight  of  bombs.  "On  account  of  the  ex- 
cellent performance  of  speed  of  the  American  Lib- 
erty motored  'planes,"  he  says,  "the  British  were 
well  pleased  with  them.  When  the  first  few  re- 
ceived were  recalled,  in  order  to  start  independent 
(American)  operations,  one  squadron  commander 
wrote  an  enthusiastic  report  regarding  the  per- 


Wings  of  War 

formance  of  these  'planes  while  in  use  with  his 
squadron." 

"In  my  opinion,"  continues  Major  Cunningham, 
"the  Liberty  DH-4  and  DH-Q-A  were  the  fastest 
and  climbed  better,  at  above  fifteen  thousand  feet, 
than  any  plane,  Allied  or  German,  on  the  front, 
As  an  illustration,  the  Hun  biplane  and  triplane 
Fokker  scouts  had  been  accustomed  to  meeting  the 
British  DH's  and  could  outclimb  and  outspeed 
them.  On  our  first  independent  raid,  the  forma- 
tion was  attacked  by  about  twice  their  number  of 
Fokker s.  We  promptly  shot  down  two  of  them 
and  then  climbed  away  from  the  remainder  as  if 
they  had  been  tied  down.  The  actions  of  the  Huns 
plainly  showed  their  amazement.  This  was  their 
first  experience  with  the  Liberty  motor." 

As  a  step  in  advance  the  U.  S.  DH-Q-A  was 
designed  soon  after  the  De  Haviland  4  got  into 
production  and  four  thousand  of  them  were 
ordered  from  the  Curtiss  company  after  the  Bristol 
two-seater  was  abandoned.  While  most  of  the  De 
Haviland  4*5  were  made  by  the  Dayton-Wright 
Company,  the  Standard  Aircraft  Corporation  and 
the  Fisher  Body  Company  (Detroit)  had  got  into 
production  before  the  war  ended. 

The  characteristics  of  the  De  Haviland  are  as 
follows : 


Making  Airplane  Wings 


Bird's-Eye  View  of  the  Dayton- Wright  Airplane  Company's  Plant  at  Moraine, 

near  Dayton,  Ohio 


The  Wrestle  with  the  'Planes 


Endurance  at  6500  feet,  full  throttle.  2  hrs.,  13  min. 
Endurance  at  6500  feet,  half  throttle.3  hrs.,  3  min. 
Ceiling  ..........................  19,500  feet 

Climb  to  10,000  feet  (loaded)  ......  14  min. 

Speed  at  ground  level  .............  124.7  mi.  per  hr. 

Speed  at  10,000  feet  ..............  120  mi.  per  hr. 

Speed  at  15,000  feet  ..............  113  mi.  per  hr. 

Weight,  bare  'plane  ...............  2391  pounds 

Weight,  loaded  ...................  3582  pounds 

The  production  of  De  Haviland  4  machines  is 
as  follows  : 

November,  1917  ........................... 

December  ................................. 

January,  1918  ............................. 

February  ................................. 

March  ....................................  4 

April  .....................................  15 

May  .....................................  153 

June  .....................................  336 

July  ......................................  484 

August  ...................................  234 

September  ................................  757 

October  ...................................  1,097 

November  ................................  i  ,072 

December  .................................  456 


Total 4,587 

The  De  Haviland  4*5  were  the  only  American- 
made  service  machines  delivered  to  the  A.  E.  F. 
The  decision  made  on  recommendation  from 


i52  Wings  of  War 

General  Pershing  and  the  Boiling  Commission  in 
1917  to  leave  the  pursuit  machines  to  European 
makers  was  reversed  too  late  for  us  to  be  repre- 
sented by  them,  and  the  failure  of  the  attempt  to 
adapt  the  Bristol  two-seater  resulted  in  lack  of 
representation  in  two-seater  fighters.  However, 
there  was  a  great  need  for  the  reconnaissance 
machines  when  they  did  arrive — and  after  all  the 
main  military  value  of  airplanes  was  reconnaissance. 
The  fighters'  raison  d'etre  was  chiefly  to  protect 
and  assist  them — and  though  the  De  Haviland  4*5 
were  technically  classed  as  observation  and  bomb- 
ing 'planes,  they  were  able  on  account  of  their 
speed,  the  rapidity  of  their  ascent,  the  height  of 
their  ceiling,  and  the  nature  of  their  armament,  to 
give  a  very  good  account  of  themselves  in  a  fight. 
By  the  time  they  began  to  arrive  in  France  in  num- 
bers, the  foreign  deliveries  of  fighters  had  much 
improved,  and  when  the  armistice  was  signed  our 
forces  abroad  had  received  more  than  five  thousand 
'planes,  service  and  training,  from  foreign  makers 
— mostly  French — and  3302  were  in  use. 

To  be  sure,  one  feels  a  sort  of  diffidence  about 
saying  much  about  the  French  contribution  to  our 
aerial  fighting  equipment — for  no  matter  how  suf- 
ficient the  explanations  it  is  not  pleasant  to  have 
to  admit  that  so  great  an  industrial  country  as 


The  Wrestle  with  the  'Planes  153 

ours  had  to  lean  so  heavily  on  French  industry. 
It  was  so  and  inevitably  so  in  order  that  American 
man  power  might  make  itself  felt  decisively  in  the 
battle  front  of  1918. 

The  Allies  understood  the  situation,  and  when 
Boiling  left  for  Europe  in  June,  1917,  he  carried 
with  him  the  firm  conviction,  upon  which  all  his 
later  conclusions  were  based,  that  America  with  no 
engine  or  'plane  industries  and  without  engine  and 
'plane  designs  suitable  for  war  service,  could  not 
be  ready  to  begin  making  shipments  to  France 
under  twelve  to  fifteen  months  whether  we  copied 
or  originated.  Boiling  knew  even  then  that  the 
Allies  must  not  only  hold  the  battle  line,  but  must 
help  us  in  training  and  in  equipment  until  we  could 
overcome  the  tremendous  lead  in  the  new  science 
and  art  of  aerial  combat,  which  had  been  gained 
by  the  great  European  powers  while  American 
aviation  slumbered.  Boiling  fully  presented  the 
deplorable  status  to  General  Pershing  and  recom- 
mended that  all  aviation  equipment  needed  in 
France,  before  July,  1918,  be  bought  from  the 
English,  French,  and  Italians.  Accordingly,  orders 
were  placed  in  France  and  Italy,  as  described  else- 
where, for  the  machines  that  were  to  stop  the  gap 
until  the  American  "ships"  should  arrive,  just  as 
French  artillery,  tanks,  etc.,  had  to  be  provided 


154  Wings  of  War 

for  about  all  the  American  combat  units  of  1917 
and  1918. 

Very  likely  aircraft  and  artillery  matters  might 
have  been  handled  better  but  the  real  mishandling 
was  before  the  war.  The  responsibility  rests  with 
leaders  and  people  who  permitted  the  now  incon- 
ceivable folly  of  letting  the  horrific  war  in  Europe 
drag  through  well-nigh  three  years  with  no  prepa- 
ration worthy  of  the  name  on  this  side.  To  deal 
harshly  with  the  self-sacrificing  men  who  did  so 
well  to  correct  the  fundamental  blunder  when  it 
was  too  late  is  merely  to  divert  attention  from  the 
cause  to  the  effect. 

Looking  backwards,  it  is  now  plain  that  the 
United  States  should  not  have  withdrawn  its 
efforts  to  produce  a  single-seater  fighting  'plane, 
as  it  did  when  the  Spad  order  was  canceled  in 
December,  1917.  Inconsequence  of  that  decision 
we  should  have  been  very  short  of  a  much  needed 
type  in  1919,  as  we  were  in  1918.  It  was  taken, 
however,  on  the  practically  unanimous  opinion  of 
General  Pershing,  our  aviation  representatives 
abroad,  and  the  Allied  government  authorities. 
This  subject  has  been  touched  upon  heretofore, 
but  it  is  worthy  of  further  elucidation,  because 
none  of  the  critical  investigations  of  aircraft  pro- 
duction have  given  it  proper  weight.  They  have 


The  Wrestle  with  the  '  Planes   155 

been  content  to  state  the  bare  fact  without  the 
circumstances,  and  leave  the  inference  that  it  was 
another  fault  of  the  equipment  division  of  the 
Signal  Corps.  The  Spad  sample  reached  the  Cur- 
tiss  works  in  Buffalo  on  September  27th  and  it 
was  ordered  into  production  on  a  large  scale,  only 
to  be  revoked  in  accordance  with  instructions  from 
abroad,  because  it  was  the  best  judgment  there 
that  the  day  of  the  single-seater  was  about  over. 
The  attempt  to  Americanize  the  Bristol  two- 
seater  fighter  was  the  big,  flat  failure  of  American 
aeronautical  engineering.  There  is  no  doubt  that 
the  selection  of  the  Bristol  was  a  wise  one.  The 
failure  was  in  adaptation.  It  is  the  common  im- 
pression that  the  failure  was  primarily  due  to  the 
fact  that  the  Liberty  motor  and  the  Bristol  were 
incompatible,  because  of  the  much  greater  power 
of  the  former  than  the  Rolls-Royce  engine  that  had 
been  used  in  it  in  the  British  service.  Engineers 
now  state  there  was  no  such  essential  incompati- 
bility, and  point  to  the  successful  designing  of 
other  two-seaters  around  the  Liberty  12.  The 
redesigning  of  the  Bristol  was  first  taken  up  by 
the  Signal  Corps  aeronautical  engineering  staff, 
working  from  a  sample  that  reached  Washington, 
September  5,  1917,  and  from  the  original  drawings. 
When  the  Spad  contract  with  the  Curtiss  Company 


Wings  of  War 

was  canceled  the  work  was  turned  over  to  that 
company  with  the  government  engineers  cooper- 
ating; next  the  engineering  responsibility  was 
entirely  shifted  to  the  company;  finally  it  was 
sought  to  complete  the  work  under  the  direction 
of  government  engineers.  The  basic  trouble, 
which  so  much  engineering  shifting  did  not  help, 
was  the  fact  that  in  attempting  to  put  onto  the 
Bristol  all  the  equipment  of  the  De  Haviland  4, 
some  eight  hundred  pounds  of  weight  were  added 
without  a  corresponding  extension  of  wing  surface. 
The  machine  was  overloaded.  Notwithstanding 
this  elemental  error,  so  much  time  was  taken  up 
with  the  baffling  problems  of  redesigning  to  ac- 
commodate equipment,  that  even  sample  machines 
were  not  ready  until  well  along  in  the  spring  of 
1918.  Their  performance  was  unsatisfactory  and 
productive  of  casualties,  and  when  John  D.  Ryan, 
then  at  the  head  of  the  air  division  of  the  army, 
witnessed  the  death  of  two  aviators  in  an  experi- 
mental flight  at  Buffalo,  he  ordered  the  Bristol 
experiment  stopped. 

This  failure,  while  it  was  a  costly  one  in  respect 
to  waste  of  time  and  material,  was  not  a  disastrous 
one,  for  the  reason  that  the  De  Haviland  4,  though 
designated  as  an  observation  machine,  and  the  Bris- 
tol two-place  fighter  were  in  fact  essentially  the 


The  Wrestle  with  the  'Planes   157 

same  type.  Had  the  Bristol  experiment  succeeded  it 
would  have  gotten  a  very  considerably  larger  num- 
ber of  machines  in  France  before  the  end  of  the  war, 
but  it  would  not  have  given  any  pronounced  variety 
to  our  aerial  equipment  there.  The  great  restric- 
tion of  American  aeroplane  force  in  France  was 
due  to  the  abandonment  of  the  single-seater,  the 
Spad,  in  1917.  This  was  not  a  production  fault, 
being  rather  an  error  of  military  judgment,  made, 
as  it  now  develops,  against  the  conviction  of 
Colonel  Deeds  and  his  associates.  Their  prompt- 
ing was  to  go  ahead  with  the  single-seaters,  but 
the  decision  did  not  rest  with  them. 

While  the  Bristol  experiment  was  approaching 
its  dismal  end,  Captain  Lepere,  a  French  aero- 
nautical engineer  originally  brought  to  this  country 
for  the  purpose  of  designing  a  two-seater  fighter 
around  the  Bugatti  engine,  was  achieving  a  bril- 
liant success  with  such  a  'plane  built  around  the 
Liberty  motor.  His  work  was  done  at  the  Packard 
plant,  a  contract  having  been  made  with  the 
Packard  Company  to  provide  him  with  the  shop 
facilities  to  build  25  experimental  'planes.  The 
Lepere  'plane  attained  a  speed  of  136  miles  an 
hour  at  low  levels  and  of  102  at  20,000  feet,  to 
which  height  it  climbed  in  41  minutes.  Even  at 
10,000  feet  its  speed  was  127  miles  an  hour,  as 


158  Wings  of  War 

compared  with  the  Liberty  De  Haviland's  117. 
Four  thousand  of  these  machines  were  ordered,  but 
there  was  no  production  before  the  armistice  was 
signed.  It  was  confidently  believed,  however,  that 
in  the  Lep£re  the  American  air  forces  at  the  front 
would  have  had  the  supreme  two-seater  fighter  in 
the  spring  of  1919.  The  Lepere  represented  the 
union  of  the  training  and  technique  of  the  best 
engineers  of  France  with  the  Liberty  motor,  admit- 
tedly the  best  of  all  aviation  engines.  Captain 
Lepere  also  designed  two  other  two-place  fighters, 
as  mentioned  below. 

Just  as  1917  saw  the  Liberty  motor  developed 
and  1918  saw  it  in  vast  production,  so  1918  saw 
the  development  of  'planes  in  America  and  1919 
would  have  seen  both  American  engines  and  fight- 
ing 'planes  produced  in  unequaled  quantities  and 
in  action  at  the  front  by  the  thousands.  The 
other  experimental  orders,  all  but  three  of  which 
have  been  delivered,  and  most  of  which  are  very 
promising,  are  as  follows: 

SINGLE-SEATER  PURSUIT 

Thomas-Morse  MB-3 — 3OO-H.  P.  Hispano  engines 
Vought  VE-8  one-place  fighter — 3OO-H.  P.  Hispano 

engines 
Ordnance  Engineering  Model  D — 3OO-H.  P.  Hispano 

engines 


A  Loening  Monoplane  on  the  Ground 

U.  S.  Air  Service  Photo 


Loening  Monoplane  in  Flight  in  the  Clouds 


The  Wrestle  with  the  'Planes   159 

Pomilio — Liberty  8  engine 
Pomilio — Liberty  12  engine 
Verville — 300  H.  P.  Hispano  engines 

TWO-SEATER  FIGHTER 

Lusac — ii  Liberty — 12  engines 

Lepere  (armored)  C-2I — Bugatti  engine 

Lep£re   Triplane    (day   bomber) — two   Liberty — 12 

engines 

Curtiss  Triplane — Kirkham  engine 
Curtiss  Ground  Harassment  Biplane — Bugatti  engine 
Loening  2-place  Monoplane — Liberty  12  engine 
Loening — 3OO-H.  P.  Hispano  engine 
USDgA  and  B— Liberty  12 
USXB-i— 300-H.  P.  Hispano 
USXB-2— Liberty  8 

Thomas-Morse  MB    i    and  2 — Liberty — 12  engine, 
geared  Martin  Bomber  (day  bomber) — two  Liberty 

engines 

The  Thomas-Morse  Company,  it  should  be 
remarked  here,  also  produced  a  scout  machine 
that  was  primarily  intended  for  advanced  training. 
In  the  beginning  it  was  the  intention  to  complete 
advanced  training  of  aviators  in  Europe,  and 
great  preparations  were  made  at  Issoudun,  in 
France,  and  elsewhere,  for  that  purpose.  Later 
it  was  decided  to  complete  the  training  of  at  least 
part  of  the  flyers  in  this  country.  The  Bristol 
Scout  was  recommended  as  the  suitable  machine 
for  this  purpose.  When  the  sample  was  received 


160  Wings  of  War 

in  this  country  it  was  turned  over  to  the  Thomas- 
Morse  people  for  adjustment  and  adaptation.  It 
was  the  general  plan  then  to  have  this  company 
develop  into  the  manufacture  of  single-place 
fighters  using  the  rotary  engines.  A  sample 
Nieuport  was  also  provided  for  them  as  an  object 
of  study  and  source  of  suggestions.  Ultimately 
the  army  aviation  authorities  reported  adversely 
on  the  Bristol  Scout  design  and  it  was  abandoned. 
The  Thomas-Morse  Company  then  continued  the 
development  of  a  one-place  machine,  of  its  own 
design,  using  the  Gnome  engine  at  first  and 
the  8o-H.  P.  Le  Rhone  later,  and  this  machine 
has  since  become  one  of  the  regular  training 
machines. 

The  Morse  MB-3,  mentioned  above,  designed 
to  take  the  3OO-H.  P.  Hispano-Suiza  engine,  is  a 
very  promising  machine. 

Chas.  M.  Vought,  besides  designing  the  VE-8 
single-seater  pursuit  machine,  to  use  also  the  300- 
H.  P.  Hispano  engine,  was  first  instructed  to  build 
a  two-place  advance  training  machine  around  the 
I5O-H.  P.  Hispano.  This  machine  had  been  ap- 
proved and  put  into  production  at  the  plant  of  the 
Springfield  Aircraft  Corporation.  Production  was 
just  beginning  when  the  armistice  was  signed.  It 
gave  promise  of  great  excellence,  and  was  pro- 


The  Wrestle  with  the  'Planes   161 

nounced  by  veteran  fliers  as  the  best  of  all  two- 
place  training  machines,  foreign  or  American. 

The  Pomilio  machines  were  the  fruit  of  the 
effort  to  have  Italian  designers  build  models 
around  the  Liberty  engine.  Two  of  the  Pomilio 
brothers  were  brought  to  this  country,  and  the 
Alison  shops  at  Indianapolis  were  turned  over  to 
them.  Their  single-seater  promised  speeds  around 
150  miles  an  hour  or  better. 

The  Loening  machines  are  also  very  promising. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

THE  PROBLEM  OF  THE   NIGHT-BOMBING  MACHINES 

THE  problem  of  choosing  types  of  night-bomb- 
ers, and  developing  and  putting  them  into  pro- 
duction in  this  country,  was  even  more  baffling 
than  the  problem  of  the  smaller  'planes.  It  led 
to  even  more  public  disapproval,  because  it  was 
chiefly  the  night-bomber  that  would  realize  the 
popular  desire  to  see  the  German  hinterland  pun- 
ished and  terrorized  by  the  night-flying  engines  of 
destruction,  even  as  France  and  England  had  been. 
Liberal  provision  for  the  big  bombers  was  made  in 
the  1917  program,  but  the  difficulties  were  so 
great  that  the  end  of  the  war  found  a  total  pro- 
duction of  only  about  120  of  them.  These  slow, 
enormously  large,  great-weight  carrying  machines 
required  two  or  three  engines  to  propel  them  and 
presented  most  difficult  manufacturing  problems. 
The  selection  of  types  was  practically  limited  to 
the  Caproni  and  the  Handley-Page,  each  using 
Liberty  motors.  On  the  whole,  the  Caproni  bi- 

162 


o 


Night-Bombing  Machines      163 

plane,  using  two  Liberty  engines,  was  probably  re- 
garded as  the  superior  machine  but  it  soon  became 
involved  in  a  maze  of  negotiatory  complications 
regarding  the  rights,  which  caused  the  drawings 
to  be  withheld  indefinitely  and  blocked  utilization 
of  the  models  that  the  first  Italian  air  mission 
brought  to  America  in  the  fall  of  1917.  As  the 
Handley-Page  drawings  were  obtainable,  it  was 
decided  to  put  it  into  production,  anyway,  though 
it  was  well  understood  that  its  ceiling  was  low  and 
that  the  advance  in  anti-aircraft  guns  might  soon 
retire  it. 

The  same  old  trouble  as  to  drawings  soon  ap- 
peared in  regard  to  the  Handley-Page.  The  first 
set  was  received  in  August,  1917,  but  two  complete 
sets  followed  later  from  England  and  each  involved 
a  change  of  practically  all  the  parts.  When  it  is 
recalled  that  there  are  more  than  a  hundred  thou- 
sand parts  in  each  machine,  the  complications  of 
adaptation  to  manufacture  appear  as  appalling. 
The  headquarters  of  the  Handley-Page  effort  were 
placed  with  the  Standard  Aircraft  Corporation, 
Elizabeth,  N.  J.,  but  the  manufacturing  division 
of  the  work  was  distributed. 

On  account  of  the  enormous  size  of  these  ma- 
chines with  their  wing  spread  of  more  than  one 
hundred  feet  it  was  evident  that  it  would  not  be 


164  Wings  of  War 

practicable  to  ship  completely  assembled  machines 
abroad.  It  was  therefore  decided  to  make  the 
parts  in  this  country  and  ship  them  to  an  English 
plant  for  assembling.  Even  the  packing  of  the 
parts  so  that  they  would  withstand  the  vicissi- 
tudes of  shipping  was  a  delicate  matter.  Inci- 
dentally it  may  be  said  here  that  not  only  was  this 
packing  wonderfully  well  done  with  the  Handley- 
Page  parts  but  also  with  the  De  Haviland  4*5  that 
were  shipped  to  France,  and  the  manufacturers 
were  cordially  complimented  on  their  fine  work  in 
this  respect.  A  contract  was  entered  into  with  the 
British  Air  Ministry  for  the  erection  of  an  assem- 
bling plant  at  Oldham  in  Lancashire.  It  was  ar- 
ranged that  the  parts  were  to  be  collected  prior  to 
shipment  at  a  special  warehouse  of  the  Standard 
Company,  which  was  also  to  complete  the  erection 
of  ten  per  cent,  of  the  machines  for  training  use 
in  this  country. 

Liberty  engines  of  the  standard  12-cylinder  type 
furnished  the  power. 

The  fittings,  often  very  intricate  fabrications  of 
pressed  steel,  were  almost  all  made  by  the  Mullins 
Company  of  Salem,  Ohio. 

The  wood  parts  were  supplied  by  the  Grand 
Rapids  Airplane  Company,  which  was  a  combina- 
tion of  the  Grand  Rapids  furniture  manufacturers, 


The  De  Haviland  9,  Successor  to  the  DH-4 


The  First  American-Built  Liberty-Caproni 


Night-Bombing  Machines      165 

whose  great  industry  was  thus  brought  into  the 
airplane  effort. 

Delays  comparable  to  those  of  the  smaller 
'planes  of  foreign  design  beset  the  work  from  start 
to  finish.  Aside  from  the  engine  installations, 
there  was  the  always  present  problem  of  inade- 
quate and  altered  drawings.  Finally  the  English 
assembling  plant  was  slow  in  building.  When  op- 
erations were  discontinued  one  hundred  full  sets  of 
parts  had  been  shipped  to  England  and  seven  com- 
plete machines  had  been  erected  in  this  country, 
the  first  one  having  been  flown  in  June,  1918. 
Of  course,  there  was  a  great  accumulation  of  parts 
and  production  was  in  full  swing.  The  following 
facts  regarding  the  American  Handley-Page  are 
taken  from  official  sources: 

Power 2  Liberty  I2's,  400  H.  P.  each 

Cliinb  to  7,000  feet . .  . .  18  minutes,  10  seconds 
Climb  to  10,000  feet.  .  .29  minutes 
Climb  to  14,000  feet .  .  .60  minutes 
Total  weight 1 1 ,270  pounds 

On  the  trials  from  which  these  figures  were 
derived  the  machine  did  not  carry  guns,  ammuni- 
tion, or  bombs  but  did  carry  seven  men,  390  gal- 
lons of  gasoline,  and  twenty  gallons  of  oil. 

Engineers  from  the  Handley-Page  Company  were 


i66  Wings  of  War 

brought  from  England  to  assist  in  the  Handley- 
Page  development  in  this  country,  but  between 
vacillating  advices  from  the  front  and  the  compli- 
cations incident  to  redesign  for  American  pro- 
duction, progress  was  very  slow  toward  the  stage 
of  quantity  production.  Like  many  other  war 
machines  it  can  only  be  said  of  the  Handley-Page 
that  it  was  just  getting  into  its  stride  when  the 
signing  of  a  piece  of  paper  in  Compiegne  brought 
to  an  end  hostilities  and  all  that  unimaginably 
great  volume  of  production  that  America  had 
planned  and  wrought  for  a  war  that  might  have 
lasted  years  longer. 

It  was  not  until  January  I,  1918,  that  tentative 
agreements  were  made  with  the  Caproni  interests 
for  the  production  of  their  night-bomber  in  the 
United  States. 

Soon  thereafter  Captain  d'Annunzio  with  four- 
teen expert  Italian  workmen  arrived  in  this  coun- 
try and  undertook  to  redesign  the  Caproni  biplane 
to  take  three  Liberty  motors.  Unconscionably 
long  delays  ensued.  These  were  partly  due  to  the 
changes  that  were  made  in  the  organization  of  the 
Signal  Corps,  which  left  the  executive  impaired 
for  a  time,  and  partly  to  the  difficulties  in  securing 
the  hearty  cooperation  of  the  Italian  military 
mission  with  the  American  plants  which  were 


Night-Bombing  Machines     167 

working  on  the  Caproni.  The  Fisher  Body  Com- 
pany, of  Detroit,  was  entrusted  with  the  major 
part  of  the  Caproni  job  and  early  made  all  its 
arrangements  with  characteristic  rapidity  and 
thoroughness,  but  it  was  not  until  the  war  was 
over  that  the  production  stage  was  approached, 
though  a  few  samples  had  been  completed.  The 
Fisher  brothers  would  not  have  believed  in  June 
that  the  end  of  the  year  would  find  them  still  shy 
of  production,  but  they  had  to  go  through  the 
same  old  story  that  has  been  told  and  retold  of 
the  tasks  of  naturalizing  foreign  machines  for 
American  production.  In  tests  at  Mineola,  L.  I., 
September  21,  22,  1918,  the  American-made  Cap- 
roni made  the  following  records: 

TEST  No.  i  TEST  No.  2 

Speed  at  ground  level 100  mi.  per  hr.  103.2  mi.  per  hr. 

Climb  to  6,500  feet 16  min.  18  sec.  14  min.,  12  sec. 

Climb  to  10,000  feet 33  min.,  18  sec  28  min.,  42  sec. 

Climb  to  11,200  feet 49  min. 

Climb  to  13,000  feet 46  min.,  30  sec. 

Total  weight 12,904  pounds  12,350  pounds 

Glenn  L.  Martin  early  offered  his  services  to  the 
Aircraft  Board  and  the  Signal  Corps  and  to  him 
was  assigned  the  designing  of  a  powerful  bombing 
machine  which  in  size  would  be  somewhat  between 
the  two-place  day  bombers  and  the  great  night- 


i68  Wings  of  War 

bombers.  In  fact,  it  was  the  intention  of  the 
authorities  to  have  Martin  produce  a  large  and 
powerful  machine  for  day  bombing,  with  a  very 
high  ceiling  and  exceptional  speed,  but  on  account 
of  its  size  it  is  here  classed  with  the  night-bombers. 
Mr.  Martin  received  very  promptly  an  order  for 
four  experimental  machines,  each  using  two  Lib- 
erty motors.  This  order  was  placed  early  in  1917. 
Mr.  Martin  is  one  of  the  leaders  of  American 
aeronautical  engineering.  He  had  every  assistance 
from  the  Government  and  he  was  able  to  surround 
himself  with  a  competent  organization  in  the 
Glenn  L.  Martin  Company  of  Cleveland  and  yet 
it  took  him  about  a  year  to  bring  out  his  first 
machine.  This  fact  is  referred  to  only  to  indicate 
that  American  dependence  for  aircraft  could  be 
based  only  partly  on  American  engineering  and 
established  manufactories  of  aircraft. 

The  first  official  test  of  one  of  these  machines 
was  made  in  October  and  aroused  the  greatest 
enthusiasm.  Although  its  wing  spread  was  only 
seventy-five  feet,  which  was  much  less  than  that 
of-  the  Handley-Page,  its  bomb-carrying  capacity 
was  not  much  less.  Its  ground  level  speed  of  118 
miles  an  hour  was  markedly  greater  than  that  of 
the  Caproni  or  the  Handley-Page  and  it  was  evi- 
dent that  its  ceiling  of  probably  more  than  eigh- 


Night-Bombing  Machines     169 

teen  thousand  feet  would  be  greater  than  that  of 
the  Caproni.  Had  the  war  continued  the  Martin 
would  probably  have  been  the  basis  of  the  future 
American  heavy  bombing  squadrons. 

Although  the  Martin  bomber  did  not  reach  the 
production  stage  in  time  to  be  a  factor  in  the  war, 
the  time  and  effort  spent  on  it  have  not  been 
wasted.  It  can  be  used  for  mail  and  express  carry- 
ing and  the  transportation  of  freight  and  passen- 
gers. It  can  carry  eleven  passengers  or  in  lieu  of 
them  a  ton  of  mail.  The  air  service  is  using  the 
Martin  machine  for  training  purposes  and  is  equip- 
ping it  for  forest  border  and  coast  service  work. 

Thus  in  the  night-bombers,  as  in  practically 
every  other  feature  of  the  aircraft  construction 
policy,  these  two  things  were  done:  (i)  the  most 
suitable  designs  were  taken  up;  and  (2)  American 
designs  were  encouraged.  All  available  American 
engineering  ability  was  utilized  in  some  way  in 
designing  and  developing  and  at  the  same  time 
British,  French,  and  Italian  engineers  were  brought 
to  this  country,  either  to  adapt  their  existing 
designs  to  the  Liberty  engine  and  American  pro- 
duction processes,  or  to  work  out  new  designs  in 
the  American  environment. 

The  results  of  the  preliminary  tests  of  the 
Martin  bomber,  which  follow,  are  interesting  to 


170 


Wings  of  War 

compare  with  the  corresponding  figures  for  the 
Handley-Page  and  the  Caproni,  given  above : 


TEST  No.  i 


TEST  No.  2 


Speed  at  ground  level H3-3  mi.  per  hr.     118.8  mi.  per  hr. 

Climb  to  6,-soo  feet 10  min.,  45  sec.       7  min. 

Climb  to  10,000  feet 21  min.,  20  sec. 

Climb  to  15,000  feet 


Total  weight 9663  Ibs. 


14  min. 

30  min.,  30  sec. 

8137  Ibs. 


0) 

.a 

I 


CHAPTER  XVII 

AIRPLANE  PRODUCTION  RESULTS 

WHEN  one  is  disappointed  in  his  own  perform- 
ance as  compared  with  hopes  and  ambitions,  there 
is  a  sort  of  consolation  in  finding  that  at  least  he 
did  better  than  some  of  his  fellows.  We  didn't 
produce  22,000  airplanes  and  all  the  extra  parts 
that  are  the  equivalent  of  many  thousands  more 
in  the  twelve  months  between  July  I,  1917  and 
July  i,  1918.  In  those  first  twelve  months,  how- 
ever, we  did  make  6146  airplanes  of  all  kinds. 
There  are  no  figures  at  present  available  for 
French  and  Italian  or  for  German  production. 
But  according  to  the  Lockhart  report  of  Novem- 
ber ist,  quoted  in  "Aircraft  Production  Notes" 
issued  by  the  Bureau  of  Aircraft  Production,  it 
appears  that  in  the  calendar  year  1915,  which 
could  correspond  in  aircraft  production  evolution 
to  our  fiscal  year  1917-1918,  the  British  Army  and 
Navy  production  was  only  2040  machines  and  that 
not  until  1916  did  it  equal  the  American  first  war 
year  production  for  the  army  alone.  In  1917 

171 


172  Wings  of  War 

British  production  attained  to  14,400  'planes.  In 
1918  the  British  turned  out  after  four  years  30,000 
machines  and  we  11,815  after  one  year,  but  had  it 
not  been  for  the  armistice  we  would  have  produced 
12,808.  We  were  headed  for  a  production  of  4000 
'planes  a  month  by  April,  two  years  after  our  en- 
try into  the  war.  Our  engine  production  was  much 
further  advanced  and  was  probably  going  at  the 
rate  of  twice  as  much  as  French  and  British  output 
combined  when  the  war  ended.  Our  October  rate 
of  production  of  'planes  was  actually  at  the  rate  of 
20,000  a  year.  Two  years  before,  outside  of  one 
plant,  we  were  not  making  50  airplanes  a  year. 

As  to  'planes  actually  in  service  at  the  front,  it  is 
nard  to  get  figures  that  may  be  relied  on .  The  Chief 
of  Air  Service,  American  Expeditionary  Forces,  es- 
timated on  July  30,  1918,  that  the  Germans  had 
2592  machines  in  service  at  the  front,  and  the  Aus- 
trians  717.  The  relative  standing  of  the  Allies  as 
of  November,  1918,  as  given  by  Lockhart  and  as 
estimated  by  the  American  Air  Service  follows : 

LOCKHART'S  REPORT  AIR  SERVICE 

AS  OF  OCT.  i,  1918  EST.  Nov.  n 

France 3609  3600 

Britain 3641  2100 

United  States 1032  860 

Italy 1017  600 


Airplane  Production  Results   173 

These  figures  or,  at  least,  those  of  the  American 
Air  Service  are  of  fully  equipped  machines  ready 
for  service  and  do  not  include  replacement  ma- 
chines at  the  front  or  in  reserve  or  training  ma- 
chines. The  smallness  of  the  numbers  in  actual 
service  in  all  countries  as  compared  with  total  pro- 
duction is  worthy  of  note.  To  maintain  one  'plane 
in  action  eight  had  to  be  made  yearly. 

On  account  of  the  rapidly  rising  volume  of  pro- 
duction and  the  ten  thousand  or  twelve  thousand 
first-class  flyers  that  the  United  States  would  have 
had  in  the  spring  of  1919,  the  outlook  was  that  it 
would  have  taken  the  lead  by  a  large  margin. 
England  and  France  had  probably  about  reached 
the  limit  imposed  by  lack  of  human  material. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

THE  STRIVING  FOR  SPRUCE 

THE  effort  to  obtain  the  equipment  for  mastery 
of  the  air  was  more  than  'planes  and  engines.  It 
was  also  a  thousand  and  one  things  that  went  with 
them  to  outfit  a  'plane  for  service.  And  for  'planes 
and  engines  and  for  all  the  other  things  it  was  not 
only  a  struggle  to  make,  but  a  struggle  to  find, 
procure,  or  devise  the  raw  materials. 

The  Equipment  Division  (Aircraft  Production 
Bureau)  early  grasped  the  significance  of  materials 
and  accessories  for  aeroplanes.  From  the  very 
start  Colonel  Deeds  and  his  associates  made 
prompt  and  bold  decisions  and  put  forth  extra- 
ordinary efforts  to  stimulate  and  organize  the  pro- 
duction of  the  indispensable  raw  materials  both 
for  the  United  States  and  for  the  Allies.  This 
work  was  foundation  building  and,  therefore,  its 
importance  and  magnitude  were  not  appreciated, 
being  obscured  from  public  view  in  matter-of- 
course  ordinary  commercial  preparation  of  raw 

174 


The  Striving  for  Spruce       175 

materials  plus  the  extraordinary  production  for  war. 
The  decisions  as  to  what  was  needed  were  made 
quickly  and  as  quickly  carried  into  effect.  From 
the  cotton  fields  of  the  Sea  Islands  and  the  Impe- 
rial Valley  of  California  to  the  somber  and  gigantic 
forests  of  the  Pacific  Northwest  and  the  towering- 
stack  industrial  centers  of  the  east,  the  country 
was  searched  and  combed  to  devise  and  produce, 
and  with  hot  haste,  all  the  varied  and  numerous 
material  needed. 

The  struggle  royal  was  for  spruce.  To  get  spruce 
was  no  mere  matter  of  telephoning  the  lumbermen 
to  ship  it.  The  spruce  for  airplanes  must  be  of  the 
best  nature  grows  and  it  must  be  treated  with  the 
greatest  care.  As  splicing  was  little  resorted  to  at 
first  it  had  to  be  obtained  in  single  pieces  of  the 
length  of  the  wings. 

Spruce  was  an  international  problem.  All  the 
Allies  required  it.  It  was  the  wood  par  excellence 
for  the  framework  of  'planes.  On  its  successful 
production  in  abundant  quantities  depended  not 
only  the  fate  of  our  own  embryonic  program  but 
likewise  the  programs  of  France,  Britain,  and  Italy. 
The  Pacific  Northwest  was  the  principal  source  of 
supply  for  the  world.  It  had  been  logged  commer- 
cially in  connection  with  fir  and  sometimes  other 
woods.  Now  came  such  a  demand  for  it  in  quan- 


176  Wings  of  War 

tity  and  also  in  quality  that  it  must  be  logged  on 
its  own  account.  Trees  of  the  proper  quality  had 
to  be  searched  out  in  the  dense  and  tangled  forests 
of  the  Pacific  slope  of  Washington  and  Oregon. 
The  principal  stand  of  spruce  was  in  the  remote 
fastnesses  of  Clarke  County,  in  the  southwestern 
corner  of  Washington.  To  reach  it  roads  had  to 
be  slashed  through  the  dank  and  dripping  wilder- 
ness and  whole  forests  scarred  and  even  ruined  to 
obtain  the  coveted  white  wood. 

At  first  it  was  thought  that  the  lumbermen  of 
the  Northwest  would  be  able  to  meet  the  situation 
by  their  own  efforts.  Unfortunately  the  lumber 
industry  of  this  section  was  prostrated  in  the 
spring  and  summer  of  1917  by  a  great  strike.  It 
was  partly  a  strike  of  organized  labor  and  partly 
of  the  I.  W.  W.,  but  the  latter  succeeded  in  domi- 
nating the  movement  for  sinister  and  even  hostile 
purposes.  All  lumber  production  in  the  North- 
western region  was  held  up  and  there  were  many 
acts  of  savage  sabotage.  Moreover,  the  mills  were 
not  equipped  to  cut  the  straight-grained  lumber 
required  and  they  did  not  have  men  skilled  in  the 
selection  and  analysis  of  logs  to  secure  the  maxi- 
mum amounts  of  suitable  lumber  from  each  stick. 
Again  it  was  difficult  to  get  the  sawmill  men  to 
take  the  pains  to  meet  the  exacting  requirements 


The  Striving  for  Spruce 

of  the  government.  Months  dragged  by  and  the 
output  amounted  to  only  two  and  a  half  million 
feet  a  month,  as  against  requirements  of  ten  mil- 
lion feet.  Finally  the  crisis  arrived  and  extreme 
measures  were  taken  immediately.  On  recommen- 
dation of  the  Aircraft  Board  the  Chief  of  Staff  of  the 
army  issued  an  order  on  October  17,  1917,  creating 
the  spruce  production  division  of  the  Signal  Corps, 
with  Colonel  Brice  P.  Disque  in  command,  with 
headquarters  at  Portland,  Ore.  Colonel — later 
General — Disque,  put  soldiers  in  uniform  into  the 
forests  and  the  mills — more  than  twenty-five 
thousand  picked  men — and  organized  the  Loyal 
Legion  of  Loggers  and  Lumbermen,  seventy-five 
thousand  strong,  as  the  patriotic  answer  to  the 
I.  W.  W.,  including  in  it  employers  as  well  as 
employees.  Its  principles  were  no  strikes,  fair 
wages,  and  the  meeting  at  any  cost  of  the  country's 
war  needs  in  spruce.  On  March  I,  1918,  the  oper- 
ators and  the  men  entered  into  an  agreement  which 
gave  General  Disque  absolute  power  to  settle 
all  differences. 

Specifications  were  standardized  and  modified 
to  meet  milling  conditions  as  far  as  possible;  fi- 
nancial assistance  was  extended  to  operators  who 
needed  it,  "methods  of  instruction  were  agreed 
upon  and  a  price  was  fixed  by  the  government  for 


Wings  of  War 

aircraft  spruce,  thereby  stabilizing  the  industry 
and  definitely  providing  against  delays  from  labor 
disputes."  Thus  the  I.  W.  W.  were  routed,  and 
peace  and  productivity  attained  and  maintained. 
The  spruce  forests  were  studied  and  mapped  and 
hundreds  of  miles  of  railroads  and  wagon-roads 
were  built  to  get  out  the  logs.  Farmers  were  en- 
couraged to  split  or  rive  spruce  that  was  available 
on  their  lands,  and  a  cut-up  mill  with  a  capacity 
of  300,000  feet  a  day  was  erected  in  record  time 
at  Vancouver,  Wash.  Experienced  men  entered 
the  Spruce  Division  as  a  means  of  satisfying  patri- 
otic aspirations  to  render  service,  and  it  became 
more  and  more  efficient.  Order  was  brought  out 
of  chaos  and  the  spruce  victory  was  won.  The 
airplane  factories  at  home  were  amply  supplied, 
60,000,000  feet  going  to  them  and  120,000,000 
feet  being  moved  across  a  continent  and  an  ocean 
to  back  the  gallant  flyers  of  France,  England,  and 
Italy.  It  is  very  hard  to  give  an  adequate  idea  of 
all  the  difficulties  that  stood  in  the  way  of  this 
admirable  consummation.  Besides  the  local  and 
inherent  difficulties  there  were  great  obstacles  in 
the  way  of  railway  transportation  to  be  overcome 
and  even  in  procuring  the  logging  and  lumbering 
equipment  that  was  necessary  to  the  purpose. 
There  was  also  the  technical  problem  of  the 


The  Striving  for  Spruce       179 

proper  drying  of  the  lumber  by  artificial  means  in 
such  a  manner  as  to  preserve  its  strength,  the  ordi- 
nary commercial  practice  being  to  dry  it  so  as  to 
assure  retention  of  shape  rather  than  of  strength. 
This  problem  was  chiefly  solved  by  the  efforts  of 
the  Forest  Products  Laboratory  of  the  United 
States  Forest  Service  at  Madison,  Wis.,  which  in 
this  and  other  wood-utilizing  matters  supplied  the 
underlying  scientific  principles  of  treatment.  It  is 
asserted  that  in  consequence  American  practice  in 
this  respect  was  better  than  that  of  France  and 
England  although  the  subject  was  a  novel  one  in 
this  country  when  the  spruce  effort  began.  The 
knowledge  thus  disseminated  among  the  country's 
woodworkers  will  have  a  lasting  benefit  for  com- 
mercial purposes. 

As  time  went  on,  economical  methods  of  utiliz- 
ing the  spruce  were  found,  so  that  there  was  no 
such  wastage  from  the  log  as  at  first.  Splicing 
became  general  for  the  longer  pieces  and  the  re- 
quired thickness  was  often  attained  by  lamination, 
that  is  by  glueing  together  two  or  more  pieces. 
Where  it  had  at  first  taken  5000  feet  of  spruce  in 
the  rough  to  yield  the  500  feet  placed  in  the  'plane 
eventually  1000  feet  sufficed.  It  was  also  found 
that  fir  and  other  woods  could  be  substituted  for 
spruce,  with  care  in  preparation. 


i8o  Wings  of  War 

Somewhat  similar  problems  were  met  with  in  the 
matter  of  mahogany  and  other  hard  woods  suitable 
for  propeller  making,  and  the  experience  gained  in 
treating  and  handling  these  woods  for  aviation 
uses  will  be  of  general  benefit  to  the  hardwood 
industries. 

The  success  of  the  aircraft  producers  in  dealing 
with  the  spruce  problem,  resulting  as  it  did,  in 
keeping  the  European  airplane  industry  abund- 
antly supplied  with  an  essential  material,  is  a  con- 
spicuous example  of  the  important  contributions 
that  were  made  through  their  tireless  efforts  to  the 
Allied  air  effort  in  other  form  than  that  of  Ameri- 
can 'planes  and  engines.  Our  work  was  not  only, 
it  should  be  remembered,  to  build  up  a  military 
aviation  body  of  our  own,  but  also  to  keep  the 
aviation  corps  of  the  Allies  going. 


CHAPTER  XIX 

DEVELOPMENT  AND  PRODUCTION  OF  DOPE 
AND  COTTON  FABRIC 

ONE  of  the  numerous  difficulties  that  faced  the 
aircraft  managers  in  the  development  on  an  ex- 
tensive scale  of  a  great  technical  and  complicated 
industry  from  the  ground  up  was  that  of  the  fab- 
ric which  covers  the  wings.  Previous  to  the  entry 
of  the  United  States  into  the  war  the  fabric  used 
for  this  purpose  had  been  made  almost  entirely 
from  linen.  Linen  is  made  from  a  peculiar  variety 
of  flax  grown  under  certain  favorable  conditions 
in  Belgium,  Russia,  and  Ireland.  The  Belgian 
supply  was  of  course  cut  off  when  Germany  in- 
vaded Belgium  in  1914  and  the  Russian  supply 
which  had  always  been  precarious  was  also  cut 
off  after  the  Russian  revolution.  Ireland  then  re- 
mained as  the  only  source  from  which  flax  could 
be  obtained  for  airplane  linen  for  the  Allies.  A 
further  complication  arose  from  the  fact  that 
Great  Britain  used  large  quantities  of  flax  in  the 

181 


1 82  Wings  of  War 

manufacture  of  duck  sheets  and  like  materials. 
However,  until  August,  1917,  the  British  Govern- 
ment representatives  felt  confident  that  a  suffi- 
cient supply  of  Irish  linen  would  be  available  for 
the  American  aviation  program.  Soon  after  that, 
however,  it  became  evident  that  the  Irish  supplies 
were  inadequate  and  could  not  be  depended  upon. 
In  truth  it  was  not  until  after  Mr.  Peter  Fletcher, 
a  large  importer  of  linen,  who  was  sent  to  England 
as  a  direct  representative  of  the  Signal  Corps  to 
procure  aeroplane  linen,  reported  the  actual  sit- 
uation in  Great  Britain  and  Ireland,  that  it  was 
realized  that  the  United  States  must  produce  its 
own  wing  covering.  As  early  as  July,  1917, 
Mr.  Fletcher  reported  that  far  from  being  able  to 
meet  American  requirements  the  Irish  mills  would 
not  long  continue  to  produce  enough  fabric  for  the 
rapidly  extending  British  aircraft  manufacturing. 
So  correct  was  Mr.  Fletcher's  forecast  that  it 
turned  out  that  the  cotton  fabric  originated  in 
America  was  eventually  drawn  on  by  the  Allies 
themselves,  so  short  was  the  supply  of  linen. 
This  is  but  another  of  the  numerous  instances  of 
the  way  in  which  we  supported  the  air  fleets  of  the 
Allies  while  struggling  to  create  our  own. 

On  the  receipt  of  Mr.  Fletcher's  report,  the 
building  program  and  the  whole  aviation  enter- 


Dope  and  Cotton  Fabric       183 

prise  seemed  in  danger  from  the  lack  of  a  single 
material.  As  each  one  of  the  ordinary  training 
machines,  or  a  fighting  machine  like  the  DH-4, 
needed  about  two  hundred  and  fifty  yards  of 
linen  and  as  the  prospectus  was  for  the  construc- 
tion of  more  than  twenty  thousand  machines  in 
the  first  year,  it  can  be  seen  how  essential  was  an 
abundant  supply  of  a  suitable  fabric. 

The  Bureau  of  Standards  came  to  the  rescue. 
For  several  months  before  war  was  declared  on 
Germany  that  Bureau  of  the  Department  of  Com- 
merce had  been  doing  experimental  work  on  air- 
plane cloths;  a  large  variety  of  fabrics  had  been 
examined  and  several  experimentally  promising 
cloths  had  been  produced.  As  soon  as  it  became 
evident  that  America  must  find  some  other  fabric 
than  linen  for  covering  the  sustaining  surfaces  of 
airplanes  the  problem  was  put  directly  up  to  the 
Bureau  of  Standards.  There  had  been  a  decided 
prejudice  against  cotton  but  that  material  seemed 
to  offer  the  only  hope  of  sufficient  quantities. 

"It  is  long  staple  cotton  or  nothing!"  the  ex- 
perts of  the  Bureau  of  Standards  told  the  Equip- 
ment Division  of  the  Signal  Corps. 

Without  waiting  for  experiments  to  show  which 
it  would  be,  Colonel  Deeds  immediately  placed 
orders  for  $4,500,000  worth  of  long  staple  cotton. 


184  Wings  of  War 

"It  may  be  all  off  the  market  to-morrow,"  he 
said.  "It  is  this  or  nothing — consequently,  we 
will  buy  it  all." 

It  did  not  take  thirty  minutes  to  decide  on  this 
venture. 

General  Cormack,  of  the  British  Military  Mis- 
sion, is  quoted  as  saying  that  the  creation  and  pro- 
duction of  the  type  of  cotton  growth  that  is  "at 
least  the  equal  of  the  best  aeroplane  linen"  was 
the  greatest  contribution  in  the  way  of  raw  mate- 
rial that  America  made  to  the  joint  aeroplane  effort. 
All  credit  should  be  accorded  for  this  prompt 
decision  but  the  scientific  men  of  the  wonder- 
working Bureau  of  Standards  (which  filled  many  a 
deadly  industrial  breach  in  the  course  of  the  war) 
who  conducted  the  experiments  and  the  scientist 
of  the  Department  of  Agriculture  who  investigated 
long  staple  cotton  nine  years  ago,  must  not  be 
overlooked. 

The  experiments  resulted  in  two  grades  of  cot- 
ton airplane  cloth:  Grade  A  with  a  maximum 
weight  of  4^  ounces  per  square  yard  and  mini- 
mum tensile  strength  of  80  pounds  per  inch  and 
Grade  B  with  a  maximum  weight  of  4  ounces  per 
square  yard  and  a  minimum  tensile  strength  of 
75  pounds.  A  gratifying  development  as  produc- 
tion was  attained  was  that  Grade  A  turned  out  to 


Dope  and  Cotton  Fabric       185 

have  a  strength  of  85  to  90  pounds.  After  Feb- 
ruary, 1918,  this  grade  was  used  altogether,  for 
the  additional  strength  more  than  offset  the 
slightly  increased  weight.  As  soon  as  it  was  cer- 
tain that  the  new  cotton  fabric  would  be  acceptable 
for  that  purpose  the  equipment  division  of  the 
Signal  Corps  insured  itself  against  any  eventu- 
ality by  purchasing  15,000  bales  of  Sea  Island  cot- 
ton, the  long  staple  of  which  best  adapted  it  to 
the  purpose.  Orders  for  20,000  yards  of  cotton 
airplane  cloths  were  issued  in  September,  1917. 
By  March  of  the  following  year  the  production 
had  reached  400,000  yards  a  month;  in  May, 
about  900,000  yards  and  at  the  termination  of 
hostilities  the  rate  of  production  was  approxi- 
mately 1,200,000  yards  a  month.  Special  manu- 
facturing facilities  had  to  be  provided  by  the  tex- 
tile manufacturers  who  were  engaged  on  this  work 
and  it  kept  about  2600  looms  busy.  Altogether 
10,248,355  yards  of  this  fabric  were  woven  and 
after  August,  1918,  the  use  of  linen,  which  had 
been  declining  in  proportion  as  the  production  of 
cotton  increased,  was  entirely  discontinued. 

The  substitution  of  cotton  for  linen  was  one  of 
the  American  achievements  of  the  war,  and  is  now 
considered  not  as  a  makeshift  substitution  but  as 
providing  a  material  at  least  equally  good  as  linen. 


1 86  Wings  of  War 

It  is  doubtful  whether  linen  will  ever  again  be  used 
in  large  quantities  for  the  manufacture  of  airplane 
wings  in  this  country. 

Dope  was  another  manufacturing  problem.  It 
is  the  preparation  which  is  applied  on  all  the  fabric 
surfaces  of  the  airplane  in  order  to  stretch  the 
cloth  tight  and  to  fill  the  fabric  and  thereby  create 
a  smooth,  waterproof  surface.  Over  this  dope 
ordinary  spar  varnish  is  applied  to  protect  the  sur- 
face. The  dope  problem  was  not  so  much  one  of 
difficulty  of  making  material  in  this  country  as  it 
was  of  interfering  with  the  British  munitions  re- 
quirements, as  acetone,  which  is  the  basis  of  cor- 
dite, an  explosive  extensively  used  by  the  British, 
is  required  in  manufacturing  one  kind  of  dope. 
There  are  two  kinds,  namely,  nitrate  dope,  which 
is  made  from  the  nitrate  cellulose  and  wood  chem- 
ical solvents,  and  acetate  dope  which  is  made  from 
acetate  and  wood  chemical  solvents,  including 
acetone.  The  latter  kind  had  an  advantage  in 
that  it  is  slow  burning,  whereas  nitrate  dope  burns 
very  rapidly.  The  latter  not  being  exposed  to 
incendiary  bullets  when  used  on  training  'planes 
would  do  for  them  but  acetate  dope  was  indis- 
pensable to  fighting  'planes,  and  nitrate  was  the 
chief  form  of  dope  at  the  time  of  our  entry  into 
the  war.  The  Allied  governments,  especially  the 


Dope  and  Cotton  Fabric       187 

British,  had  been  consuming  the  major  part  of  the 
output  of  acetone  and  like  products,  and  it  was  a 
matter  of  grave  concern  to  the  British  Government 
when  it  found  what  extensive  quantities  of  ace- 
tone would  be  required  in  the  manufacture  of  Ameri- 
can aircraft.  It  was  estimated  that  the  American 
demand  would  be  twenty-five  thousand  tons  for 
the  1918  program  alone,  whereas  the  requirements 
of  the  Allies  and  those  of  domestic  commerce 
would  be  alone  greater  than  the  total  supply  ordi- 
narily available.  Faced  with  this  situation  it  was 
therefore  determined  that  the  government  should 
take  control  of  efforts  looking  toward  increased 
production.  A  new  kind  of  dope  had  to  be  devised 
and  this  necessity  led  to  many  and  diverse  chem- 
ical researches,  for  there  was  not  only  a  shortage 
of  acetate  of  lime,  but  also  of  the  refined  ingre- 
dients needed  in  the  dope  such  as  cellulose,  ace- 
tate, acetic  anhydride,  and  glacial  acetic  acid.  It 
was  necessary  to  commandeer  the  entire  existing 
supply  of  acetate  of  lime,  it  being  the  base  from 
which  acetone  is  made,  and  also  to  commandeer 
other  supplies  needed  for  this  work.  By  means  of 
the  government's  active  interest  and  cash  advances 
ten  large  chemical  plants,  representing  an  invest- 
ment of  about  twenty  million  dollars,  were  es- 
tablished at  Collinwood,  Tenn.;  Tyrone,  Pa.; 


i88  Wings  of  War 

Mechanicsville,  New  York;  Lyle,  Tenn.;  Fremont, 
Mo.;  Sutton,  W.  Va.;  Shelby,  Ala.,  and  Terre 
Haute,  Indiana. 

As  a  result  of  these  efforts,  1,324,356  gallons  of 
dope  were  manufactured  during  the  war,  which  was 
enough  to  meet  all  requirements.  Had  the  war 
gone  on  the  new  plants  which  the  government  had 
started  would  have  been  able  of  themselves  to  meet 
all  requirements  without  further  commandeering 
of  privately  owned  plants.  Pending  the  comple- 
tion of  the  new  plants,  the  entire  available  supply 
of  chemicals  required  in  the  manufacture  of  dope 
was  moved  and  allocated  to  the  different  countries 
by  the  wood  chemical  section  of  the  War  Indus- 
tries Board,  the  British  undertaking  to  act  for 
themselves  as  well  as  the  other  Allies.  An  arrange- 
ment was  also  made  between  the  Signal  Corps 
and  the  British  War  Mission  by  which  the  Amer- 
ican and  British  governments  were  to  share  equally 
losses  resulting  from  the  erection  of  the  new 
government  plants,  or  otherwise. 


CHAPTER  XX 

MACHINE  GUNS  FOR  AIRCRAFT 

IN  view  of  the  many  fighting  uses  made  of  air- 
planes during  the  war  it  is  not  easy  to  realize  that 
the  war  in  Europe  had  lasted  about  a  year  before 
they  were  seriously  taken  as  a  new  means  of  com- 
bat. Their  uses  for  observation  and  scouting  were 
so  important  and  so  much  relied  on  that  little 
attention  was  given  to  their  possible  combat  uses. 
Indeed,  stories  are  told  of  hostile  aviators  con- 
fining their  inimical  operations  to  shaking  their 
fists  at  each  other.  The  early  use  of  offensive 
weapons  was  confined  to  revolvers;  then  service 
and  automatic  rifles  and  shotguns  were  taken  up 
and  grenades  and  darts  were  used.  The  first  step 
in  the  use  of  machine  guns  was  to  take  up  an  ordi- 
nary ground  gun,  the  observer  operating  it  from 
his  shoulder.  As  early  as  1912  a  machine  gun  had 
been  successfully  operated  from  an  airplane  in 
this  country  but  it  was  an  isolated  experiment. 
At  the  outbreak  of  the  war  the  French  had  a  few 

189 


190  Wings  of  War 

heavy  airplanes  that  were  designed  to  carry  ma- 
chine guns,  but  the  fact  is  that  as  a  bearer  of  weap- 
ons not  much  attention  was  paid  to  the  airplane 
until  the  war  had  been  going  on  a  year.  One  rea- 
son why  little  attention  was  given  to  fixed  arma- 
ment was  that  the  pilot  could  make  little  use  of  a 
gun  firing  forward  because  of  the  interference  of 
the  propeller;  and,  indeed,  on  account  of  his  atten- 
tion being  required  in  the  operation  of  the  'plane 
he  could  make  little  use  of  a  weapon  that  was 
discharged  laterally.  It  was  not  until  the  idea  of 
a  synchronizer  was  developed,  whereby  a  fixed 
machine  gun  was  so  timed  in  the  discharge  of  its 
projectiles  that  they  passed  between  the  rapidly 
revolving  blades  of  the  propeller,  that  the  airplane 
machine  gun  era  was  entered.  Before  that  fixed 
machine  guns  were  mounted  above  the  'plane  at  a 
sufficient  height  to  clear  the  arc  of  the  propeller 
with  their  fire.  It  was  difficult  to  reload  a  gun 
thus  placed  and  so,  to  bring  it  down  to  the  pilot's 
level,  the  synchronizer  was  developed.  At  first 
the  bullets  were  actually  discharged  blindly 
through  the  revolving  propeller,  those  that  struck 
the  blades  being  deflected  by  properly  placed  steel 
plates,  or  else  the  chance  of  destruction  was  taken, 
as  it  was  found  that  several  bullets  might  pass 
through  a  blade  before  it  would  break.  The 


Machine  Guns  for  Aircraft 


Germans  appear  to  have  been  the  first  to  put  the 
synchronizing  device  into  general  use,  with  their 
Fokker  monoplanes  in  1915.  Even  as  late  as  1917 
machine  guns  were  used  without  synchronizers. 
It  is  not  possible  to  say  who  hit  on  the  idea  of  so 
regulating  machine  gun  fire  that  the  bullets  would 
pass  between  the  propeller  blades,  but  credit  is 
quite  generally  given  to  the  famous  French  aviator, 
Roland  Garros. 

Aircraft  armament  was  even  stranger  to  Ameri- 
cans at  the  beginning  of  the  war  than  aircraft 
themselves.  Neither  the  ordnance  department  nor 
the  Signal  Corps  had  any  experience  with  machine 
guns  worth  mentioning.  They  were  not  used  on 
the  few  'planes  that  were  sent  to  the  Mexican 
front  during  the  Villa  disturbances.  Nothing  was 
then  known  in  this  country  about  the  installation 
of  aircraft  armament,  although  the  Savage  Arms 
Company  was  manufacturing  Lewis  flexible  air- 
craft guns  for  the  British  Government.  To  show 
how  difficult  a  task  the  matter  of  armament  was 
to  producers  who  knew  nothing  about  it,  some  at- 
tention should  be  given  to  the  special  requirements 
of  aircraft  machine  guns.  As  little  can  be  done  in 
the  way  of  overhauling  guns  while  in  the  air,  the 
jamming  of  a  gun  may  be  fatal,  as  in  that  case  the 
aviator  is  left  at  the  mercy  of  the  enemy.  The  gun 


i92  Wings  of  War 

must  be  so  constructed  that  it  will  work  in  any 
position.  To  prevent  jamming  the  ammunition 
must  be  exceptionally  excellent.  Also  a  machine 
gun  to  be  adapted  for  use  in  the  air  must  have  a 
very  high  rate  of  fire,  as  the  gun  is  usually  on  the 
target  for  only  a  second  or  two,  and  every  possible 
shot  counts.  With  ground  guns  a  rate  of  fire  of 
500  shots  a  minute  is  considered  enough,  but  air- 
craft guns  deliver  from  950  to  1000  bullets  a  min- 
ute. The  aircraft  guns  are  simpler  than  ground 
guns  in  one  respect,  and  that  is  that  water-cooling 
is  not  required  for  them  as  the  conditions  for 
aerial  combat  do  not  necessitate  continuous  firing 
for  a  long  period. 

Single-seater  machines  use  only  fixed  guns  which 
are  so  placed  that  the  barrel  is  parallel  to  the  axis 
of  the  airplane  and  the  gun  is  therefore  aimed  by 
aiming  the  'plane,  and  the  guns  of  such  machines 
must,  as  previously  explained,  shoot  through  the 
propeller.  The  flexible  guns  that  are  used  in  the 
rear  seat  of  two-place  machines  are,  of  course,  not 
fired  through  the  propeller  and  do  not  require  syn- 
chronizing devices  but  they  do  have  special  mounts 
which  permit  them  to  be  fired  in  any  direction. 
It  is  interesting  to  note  that  all  the  flexible  air- 
craft guns  in  use  among  the  Allies  have  adopted 
the  principle  of  the  Lewis  machine  gun,  which  was 


Machine  Guns  for  Aircraft     193 

invented  by  Colonel  Isaac  N.  Lewis,  U.  S.  A., 
retired.  Experts  say  that  the  Lewis  gun  principle 
of  a  drum  magazine  is  better  adapted  to  flexible 
guns  than  any  type  of  belt  feed.  In  this  respect 
the  Allies  had  an  advantage  over  the  Germans 
whose  flexible  gun  used  the  belt  feed. 

The  only  fixed  gun  used  by  the  French  and 
British  at  the  time  of  our  entry  into  the  war  was 
the  Vickers,  the  entire  production  of  which  in  the 
United  States  had  been  already  contracted  for  by 
the  Allies  for  use  in  the  ground  form. 

Through  efforts  of  officers  of  the  equipment 
division  of  the  Signal  Corps  the  Marlin- Rockwell 
Corporation  in  New  Haven,  Conn.,  developed  a 
fixed  type  of  aircraft  gun.  The  Marlin  was  chosen 
because  it  was  the  only  gun  then  available.  Not- 
withstanding marked  opposition  an  order  for 
Marlin  guns  was  placed  in  the  fall  of  1917  and 
resulted  in  giving  the  American  air  service  a  suf- 
ficient supply  of  fixed  guns. 

Had  it  not  been  for  this  order  other  departments 
of  the  service  would  have  been  seriously  handi- 
capped. For  example,  on  June  24,  1918,  the  chief 
of  ordnance  presented  cable  No.  1168,  from  the 
A.  E.  F.,  demanding  7220  machine  guns  for  tank 
use.  Within  twenty-four  hours  500  guns  were 
shipped  by  express  to  France  from  the  air  service 

13 


194  Wings  of  War 

depot  at  Fairfield,  Ohio,  and  the  remaining  6720 
guns  were  forwarded  in  the  next  two  weeks.  The 
Lewis  aircraft  guns  were  first  ordered  on  Decem- 
ber 19, 1917.  Deliveries  began  in  February,  1918, 
with  about  1500  guns  a  month  and  by  October  6000 
guns  had  been  delivered.  However,  the  Marlin  gun 
was  used  at  all  times  as  the  American  fixed  air- 
craft machine  gun.  The  first  order  was  placed  by 
the  Signal  Corps  on  September  25,  1917,  and  over 
37,500  were  turned  out  before  December,  1918,  as 
many  as  7000  guns  being  produced  in  one  month. 
Satisfactory  as  the  Marlin  gun  was  the  Browning 
aircraft  machine  gun  was  considered  superior, 
chiefly  because  it  had  the  high  rate  of  fire  of  about 
950  shots  a  minute  and  was  extremely  reliable  and 
very  accessible.  In  time  it  would  probably  have 
replaced  the  Marlin  and  all  other  fixed  machine 
guns. 

The  Marlin  gun  shoots  a  3O-caliber  bullet  at  the 
rate  of  600  to  650  shots  a  minute.  American  air- 
craft guns  were  equipped  with  the  hydraulic  type 
of  gun  control  known  as  the  Constantinesco,  with 
some  special  American  adaptations.  In  this  type 
of  gun  the  impulse  of  the  cam  of  the  aircraft 
engine  is  transmitted  to  the  gun  through  a  system 
of  tubes  containing  glycerine  under  high  pressure. 
This  device  is  so  effective  that  at  maximum  fire 


Machine  Guns  for  Aircraft     195 

1300  shots  per  minute  can  be  fired  between  the 
blades  of  a  propeller  turning  at  the  rate  of  1600  revo- 
lutions per  minute,  without  striking  the  propeller 
blades.  Even  four  guns  have  been  fitted  to  one 
'plane  and  so  controlled  that  none  of  the  bullets 
hit  the  blades.  At  the  time  of  the  signing  of  the 
armistice  6827  of  the  Constantinesco  gears  had 
been  manufactured  in  this  country  and  shipped, 
although  nothing  whatever  was  known  of  their 
nature  or  process  of  manufacture  at  the  time  we 
entered  the  war. 

Early  in  the  war  (with  the  Boiling  Commission) 
130  selected  American  mechanics  were  sent  abroad 
to  familiarize  themselves  with  the  many  and  vari- 
ous problems  of  aircraft  mechanisms.  One  of  these 
was  named  Nelson  and  to  him  was  assigned  the 
study  of  the  synchronizers.  He  undertook  the 
development  of  a  mechanical  synchronizer,  carry- 
ing on  this  work  in  the  experimental  laboratory  of 
the  Signal  Corps  and  the  Aircraft  Production 
Bureau  at  McCook  Field,  Dayton.  He  succeeded 
in  getting  a  machine  that  will  permit  of  more 
rapid  firing  and  the  concentration  of  the  bullets  in 
a  smaller  arc  than  is  possible  with  any  other  type 
of  synchronizer.  Using  the  Nelson  control  device 
it  is  possible  to  fire  a  Browning  machine  gun 
through  a  four-blade  propeller  without  hitting  any 


196  Wings  of  War 

of  the  blades.  More  than  one  hundred  of  these 
synchronizers  were  completed,  and  had  the  war 
gone  on  they  would  have  superseded  the  hydraulic 
synchronizer  in  both  American  and  foreign  practice. 
Enormous  quantities  of  ammunition  were  re- 
quired for  these  guns  and  it  was  being  made  at  the 
rate  of  ten  million  rounds  a  month.  Besides  the 
ordinary  projectile  ammunition  there  had  to  be 
developed  tracer  cartridges  which  leave  a  trail  of 
smoke  behind  them,  armor-piercing  cartridges,  and 
incendiary  cartridges  containing  a  charge  of  yellow 
phosphorus  and  intended  to  set  fire  to  whatever 
they  strike.  Many  of  the  armament  sundries  such 
as  the  metallic  disintegrating  cartridge  belts  of  the 
machine  guns,  the  details  of  fitting  the  guns  to  the 
'planes,  the  providing  of  proper  sights,  electric 
heaters  for  keeping  the  guns  warm  at  high  alti- 
tudes, etc.,  constituted  very  considerable  prob- 
lems of  development  of  manufacture  in  themselves. 


CHAPTER  XXI 

RADIO  TELEPHONE  AND  AERIAL  PHOTOGRAPHY  IN 
CONNECTION  WITH  AERIAL  OBSERVATION, 
THE  CHIEF  FUNCTION  OF  MILITARY  AVIA- 
TION 

THE  thrilling  duels  and  other  combats  of  the  air 
which  have  marked  this  war  as  being  conducted 
in  a  third  element  which  was  not  the  medium  of 
attack  or  defense  in  preceding  wars  have  centered 
public  attention  on  aerial  combat  as  the  end  of 
military  aircraft.  Attacks  on  troops  by  airplanes 
flying  low  and  raking  them  with  machine-gun  fire 
have  led  to  their  being  called  the  cavalry  of  the 
air.  Audacious  bombing  expeditions  against  en- 
emy bases  and  far  behind  the  lines  have  led  them 
to  be  considered  as  a  sort  of  substitute  for  artillery. 
No  doubt  the  popular  idea  of  the  program  of 
building  an  aircraft  fleet  whose  vessels  would  be 
numbered  by  the  thousands  was  that  they  would 
by  means  of  bombing  attacks  on  the  enemy  become 
one  of  the  chief  agencies  of  winning  the  war.  While 

197 


198  Wings  of  War 

military  men  admit  the  great  value  of  airplane 
offensives  on  account  of  their  effect  on  the  morale 
of  enemy  troops  and  civilian  population,  the  pre- 
vailing view  among  them  seems  to  be  that  the 
chief  military  use  of  the  airplanes  is  as  a  means  of 
securing  information — as  the  modern  scout.  Time 
might  have  proved  this  to  be  an  erroneous  view,  as 
it  has  in  the  course  of  history  overthrown  many  a 
technical  view.  However,  this  was  so  strongly  the 
conviction  of  the  French  army  that  it  is  authori- 
tatively stated  that  the  reason  the  French  did  so 
little  in  the  way  of  bombing  German  towns  and 
cities,  even  when  their  own  communities  were 
being  attacked  nightly,  was  their  judgment  that  the 
results  were  not  worth  the  losses  of  men  and  ma- 
chines that  they  would  entail.  Their  conception 
of  the  airplane  was  that  it  was  for  observation  and 
direct  combat  work  at  the  front.  Our  own  officials 
were  largely  of  the  French  view.  Whether  this  be 
the  right  or  the  wrong  position  is  immaterial  at  the 
moment,  except  that  it  supplies  a  justification  of 
the  fact  that  the  only  American  made  service 
'planes  that  reached  the  front  were  of  the  ob- 
servation type,  though  also  adapted  to  combat. 
In  other  words,  the  type  of  machines  that  we 
sent  to  France  was  the  type  that  was  consid- 
ered most  important,  though  it  was  not  the 


Function  of  Military  Aviation   199 

type  whose  exploits  got  on  the  front  pages  of 
newspapers. 

"The  basis  of  all  war-time  aviation  is  the  obser- 
vation air  service,"  says  Lieutenant  Colonel  Lewis 
H.  Brereton,  U.  S.  A.,  in  some  notes  on  the  activ- 
ities of  the  American  air  service  on  the  Western 
front,  "and  the  proportions  of  other  branches  of 
the  air  service  to  this  arm  are  always  related  to  the 
necessities  of  the  special  situation,  that  is,  the 
strength  of  the  opposing  air  service,  the  kind  of 
operations  which  is  in  progress,  etc.  Our  experi- 
ence is  that  the  proportion  of  one  pursuit  squadron 
to  one  squadron  of  any  other  type,  that  is  obser- 
vation or  bombardment,  was  sufficient,  but  not 
ample.  .  .  .  The  three  general  classes  of  mili- 
tary aviation  can  be  headed  under  the  titles  obser- 
vation, pursuit,  and  bombardment.  .  .  .  Our 
best  observation  'planes  were  the  Salmson  and  the 
DH-4,  Liberty  motor.  The  Salmson  was  furnished 
by  the  French  and  was  equipped  with  a  nine-cylin- 
der radial  stationary  motor  of  about  275  H.  P. 
It  was  a  very  staunch,  reliable  ship  and  exceedingly 
popular  both  with  the  French  and  with  us.  The 
DH-4,  of  course,  developed  nearly  400  H.  P.  and 
was  a  very  capable  ship. 

"The  DH-4  was  also  used  for  bombardment. 
These  'planes  carry  two  men,  pilot  and  observer, 


200  Wings  of  War 

and  three  or  four  machine  guns.  Two  of  these 
guns  are  mounted  on  the  tourelle  or  revolving 
mount  and  can  be  fired  in  almost  any  direction  by 
the  observer  in  the  rear  of  the  pilot ;  the  remaining 
guns  are  fired  by  the  pilot  in  one  direction  only, 
straight  ahead.  Right  here  you  can  see  the  enor- 
mous advantage  of  the  two-place  ship  over  the 
one-place  ship  in  combat.  The  monoplane  can 
only  fire  one  way,  that  is  heading  straight,  as  the 
guns  are  fixed.  The  observer  of  the  bi-place  ma- 
chine can  fire  all  the  time  his  opponent  is  in  range 
except  when  the  opponent  gets  into  one  of  his 
so-called  d  ad  spaces;  that  is,  in  front,  under  or 
over  his  wings,  or  under  his  tail.  I  would  myself 
be  perfectly  willing  to  engage  in  combat  against 
two  enemy  i  >ursuit  ships,  if  I  have  a  good  observer, 
in  either  a  -H  or  a  Salmson  bi-plane." 

The  air  r  ;rvice  observation  is  the  most  impor- 
tant intelligence  agent  of  an  army,  according  to 
Lieutenant  Colonel  Brereton.  The  high  command 
looks  to  it  for  the  greater  part  of  its  information 
concerning  the  movements  and  dispositions  of  the 
enemy  and  also  for  information  regarding  his  inten- 
tions. The  latter  class  of  information,  which  is 
exceedingly  important,  is  derived  largely  from 
aerial  photography,  and  Colonel  Brereton  illus- 
trates this  function  by  giving  the  outlines  of  the 


2 

CO 


— 
O 


Function  of  Military  Aviation  201 

manner  in  which  the  French  High  Command  ascer- 
tained the  German  intentions  in  the  offensive  be- 
ginning July  15,  1918.  For  two  weeks  before  that 
day  French  aviator-observers  had  systematically 
photographed  the  whole  of  the  Marne  salient — 
Rheims,  Chateau-Thierry,  Soissons — and  by 
studying  the  data  thus  obtained  the  French  Gen- 
eral Staff  was  able  to  forecast  the  German  drive 
within  forty-eight  hours  and  ascertain  almost 
exactly  the  sector  of  the  effort.  The  enemy's 
intentions  were  disclosed  by  the  appearance  of 
new  second-line  defenses,  by  new  supply  x  depots 
and  ammunition  dumps  and  the  enormous  increase 
of  traffic  on  the  highways,  the  pushing  of  ammuni- 
tion dumjps  nearer  to  the  front,  new  telephone 
lines  and  roads ;  and  finally  as  an  indication  of  the 
imminence  of  the  attack  "a  sudden  great  increase 
in  the  activities  on  the  roads  immediately  behind 
the  German  front  lines ;  the  construction  of  ramps 
and  new  roadways  leading  from  battery  positions 
and  trenches  to  facilitate  the  egress  of  troops ;  and 
one  particularly  damning  indication  of  attack,  the 
fortunate  location  by  a  French  aerial  observer  of  a 
German  pontoon  train,  located  not  far  from  the 
Marne  and  just  north  of  Dormans."  With  this 
and  other  information  the  French  High  Command 
was  able  to  make  such  dispositions  that  the  Ger- 


202  Wings  of  War 

man  offensive  was  not  only  stopped  in  its  tracks 
but  was  immediately  followed  by  an  Allied  offen- 
sive that  reversed  the  whole  course  of  the  war  and 
continued  until  the  Germans  acknowledged  defeat. 

Observation  is  just  as  important  during  a  battle 
as  before  it.  The  work  of  the  observation  'planes 
while  the  battle  is  progressing  consists  among 
other  things  of  keeping  headquarters  informed  of 
the  progress  of  its  own  front  lines,  as  well  as  the 
locations  of  the  infantry.  This  involves  flying 
very  low  for  visual  observation  and  identification 
of  units  and  is  very  perilous  as  the  observer  is 
taking  chances  with  the  barrage  fire  of  his  own 
troops,  to  say  nothing  of  the  flock  of  pursuit 
'planes  that  is  seeking  to  destroy  him,  with  the 
result  that  the  two-place  observation  'plane  has  to 
fight  an  unequal  battle  before  it  can  get  away 
with  its  information. 

The  use  of  bombing  'planes  in  battle  is  well 
illustrated  by  Colonel  Brereton's  account  of  the 
greatest  aerial  concentration  that  took  place  dur- 
ing the  war,  viz.,  at  Damvilliers,  during  the  Amer- 
ican offensive  of  the  Argonne-Meuse,  which  began 
on  September  26th.  The  reports  of  the  observers 
indicated  a  tremendous  concentration  of  German 
artillery  and  infantry  at  Damvilliers  in  the  center 
of  a  forest  eight  kilometers  behind  the  German 


Function  of  Military  Aviation  203 

front  lines,  apparently  preliminary  to  a  German 
counterattack.  Of  what  follows  Colonel  Brereton 
says: 

"After  a  consultation  with  the  High  Command, 
the  Chief  of  Air  Service  (Brigadier  General 
William  Mitchell)  gave  directions  to  our  bombard- 
ment pursuit  aviation  and  to  the  French  aviation 
under  our  command  for  a  concentrated  bombing 
attack  on  the  woods  in  which  Damvilliers  was 
located.  Shortly  after  the  order  was  issued,  one 
of  the  largest  formations  of  airplanes  ever  assem- 
bled passed  from  army  headquarters  on  its  mis- 
sion. It  consisted  of  352  ships,  French  and 
American,  composed  of  French  and  American  bom- 
bardment squadrons  with  pursuit  squadrons  for 
protection.  More  than  thirty- two  tons  of  bombs 
were  dropped  in  the  space  of  less  than  thirty 
minutes.  The  attempt  of  the  German  aviation  to 
block  this  maneuver  resulted  in  a  spirited  air 
fight  in  which  the  enemy  'planes  were  cleared  from 
the  air,  having  had  twelve  of  their  'planes  de- 
stroyed and  several  others  shot  down  out  of  control. 
Our  losses  were — one  'plane  shot  down  on  our  front 
lines  and  eight  aviators  wounded,  none  missing. 
The  counter-attack  was  completely  dispersed  and, 
although  the  German  casualties  are  not  known, 
photographs  taken  of  the  area  bombed  the  follow- 


204  Wings  of  War 

ing  day  showed  very  extensive  demolishment  of  the 
greater  part  of  the  area  and  it  was  subsequently 
known  that  parts  of  two  German  divisions  had 
been  concentrated  in  this  area." 

Viewed  in  this  light  the  chief  purpose  of  a  mili- 
tary airplane  is  to  act  as  a  conveyance  for  the 
observer  or  scout  and  for  the  instruments  he 
requires  in  doing  his  work.  Chief  among  these 
are  the  radio  telephone  and  the  photographic  cam- 
era, the  one  being  voice  and  ear  and  the  other  the 
eyes  of  the  airplane.  Both  underwent  tremendous 
development  during  the  war,  and  the  American 
contribution  to  such  development  was  very  impor- 
tant, especially  in  respect  to  the  radio  telephone,  it 
being  generally  conceded  that  the  American  appa- 
ratus was  best.  The  radio  telephone  is  of  great 
use,  not  only  as  a  means  of  communication  between 
the  units  of  a  flying  squadron  but  chiefly  in  con- 
nection with  directing  artillery  fire.  Radio  teleg- 
raphy was  further  developed  than  radio-telephony 
at  the  beginning  of  the  war  and  when  the  United 
States  entered  it  the  former  had  been  very  suc- 
cessfully adapted  to  aerial  use.  The  Signal  Corps 
was  especially  at  home  in  this  work  and  thousands 
of  radio  telegraph  sets  were  promptly  provided. 
In  fact  aerial  radio  work  had  been  closely  studied 
and  carefully  developed  since  as  far  back  as  1911. 


Function  of  Military  Aviation  205 

Previous  to  the  application  of  aerial  electrical 
communication,  indirect  artillery  fire,  which  is 
practically  the  only  kind  of  artillery  fire  in  modern 
warfare,  was  controlled — in  so  far  as  it  was  con- 
trolled at  all — from  airplanes  or  balloons  by 
various  forms  of  visible  signals,  which  were  ob- 
viously inadequate. 

Before  the  United  States  entered  the  war  little 
had  been  done  to  adapt  the  radio  telephone  to 
aerial  uses.  About  that  time  both  the  French  and 
English  began  to  make  considerable  headway,  and 
our  specialists  worked  unremittingly  on  the  idea. 
It  is  superior  to  radio-telegraphy  as  used  in  the  air 
because  it  is  communication  by  word  of  voice 
instead  of  by  signals.  It  provides  the  means  of 
conveying  full  instead  of  skeletonized  information 
both  to  the  ground  and  to  other  airplanes.  The 
subject  is  so  technical  that  no  attempt  will  be  made 
to  describe  the  apparatus  here.  Some  of  the  prob- 
lems that  had  to  be  solved  to  utilize  radio  tele- 
phony were  the  overcoming  of  the  drowning  effects 
of  the  thunderous  noise  of  the  motor,  the  rush  of 
the  air,  and  the  rattle  of  machine  guns;  the  reduc- 
tion of  the  weight  of  the  apparatus  to  smallest 
possible  minimum ;  the  avoidance  of  all  fire  hazard 
from  the  electric  current;  the  obtaining  of  such 
a  simplicity  that  flyers  could  operate  it  easily 


206  Wings  of  War 

and  without  long  instruction  and  the  overcoming 
of  the  effects  of  airplane  vibration  on  the  appa- 
ratus. As  to  the  first  problem,  only,  it  may  be 
remarked  that  a  way  was  found  literally  to  strain 
the  sound  waves  of  the  voice  from  those  of  the 
motor,  so  that  the  observer  could  transmit  his 
voice,  though  when  talking  into  the  transmitter 
he  could  not  hear  himself. 

As  far  back  as  1910  Col.  C.  C.  Culver  of  the 
Signal  Service,  looking  upwards  at  a  flock  of  eleven 
airplanes  demonstrating  at  an  aviation  meet,  at 
Belmont  Park,  remarked  that  if  they  could  only 
talk  to  each  other  another  wonder  would  have 
been  accomplished.  Eight  years  later,  Colonel 
Culver,  who  had  kept  his  eye  on  this  objective  all 
the  time,  was  to  have  the  proud  distinction  of  de- 
monstrating in  France  the  complete  superiority  of 
the  American  method  of  adapting  radio  telephony 
to  aerial  uses,  Largely  due  to  Colonel  Culver's 
insistent  interest  in  the  subject  of  radio  communi- 
cation as  applied  to  airplanes,  the  successful 
demonstration  of  long  distance  radio  telephony  for 
naval  uses  by  the  engineers  of  the  Bell  system,  and 
particularly  of  the  Western  Electric  Company 
in  1915,  was  followed  by  successful  studies  of  the 
utilization  of  the  radio  telephone  for  various  mil- 
itary purposes,  such  as  communication  with  and 


View  of  Observer's  Cockpit  of  DH-4,  Showing  General  Arrangement 

of  Apparatus,  Including  Wireless  Sending  and  Receiving 

Outfit,  and  Scarff  Mounts  for  Lewis  Guns 


Function  of  Military  Aviation  207 

between  ships  at  sea.  Dr.  Frank  B.  Jewett, 
chief  engineer  of  the  Western  Electric  Company, 
and  his  assistant  engineers,  including  Edward  B. 
Craft  and  E.  H.  Colpitts,  were  finally  interested 
in  concentrating  their  attention  on  the  radio  tele- 
phone as  adapted  to  airplane  service.  Then  there 
came  a  day  when  the  Aircraft  Board  and  the  Joint 
Army  and  Navy  Technical  Board  were  wonder- 
ingly  introduced  to  the  achieved  apparatus  at 
Dayton,  to  the  work  of  developing  which  they  had 
given  every  possible  encouragement.  After  that 
demonstration,  however,  it  was  necessary  to  con- 
vince the  active  army  of  the  merits  of  the  new 
means  of  communication.  Then  after  the  army 
had  approved  it,  came  the  work  of  manufacturing 
the  radio-telephone  sets  and  installing  them  on 
the  planes. 

"It  would  take  volumes  to  describe  the  innumer- 
able experiments  and  heartbreaking  failures  before 
the  first  real  successes,"  says  Mr.  Craft  in  an 
article  on  the  subject.  "At  length  a  head  set  in- 
side an  aviator's  helmet  was  devised,  which  would 
exclude  the  noise  of  the  airplane  engine  and  the 
rushing  air.  A  brilliant  line  of  experiments,  largely 
at  the  hands  of  J.  P.  Minton,  resulted  as  well  in  a 
transmitter  or  microphone,  which  possessed  the 
remarkable  quality  of  being  insensitive  to  wind 


208  Wings  of  War 

and  engine  noises,  and  at  the  same  time  very 
responsive  to  the  tones  of  the  voice.  Then  three 
solid  months  of  the  hardest  kind  of  work  was 
necessary  to  iron  out  all  the  kinks  and  get  the 
thing  in  shape  so  that  it  might  be  considered  a 
practicable  device  for  the  everyday  use  of  other 
than  experts. 

"Finally  in  October,  1917,  we  reached  the  point 
where  we  thought  it  was  time  to  spring  it  on  the 
A.  E.  F.  and  accordingly  Colonel  Culver  was  sent 
abroad  with  several  trunkloads  of  the  apparatus  to 
show  our  people  overseas  that  we  had  not  been 
asleep  on  the  job  and  had  a  new  tool  for  their  use. 
In  early  December  the  next  historical  event  took 
place  at  South  Field,  Dayton,  Ohio.  To  those  of 
us  who  were  mixed  up  in  this  little  affair  those  were 
three  days  which  we  will  never  forget.  Colonel 
Carty  and  Colonel  Jewett  were  in  the  party  which 
was  made  up  of  admirals,  generals,  foreign  repre- 
sentatives and  experts  galore,  all  willing  to  be 
shown  but  decidedly  skeptical. 

"It  must  be  remembered  that  the  idea  had  not 
yet  been  told  to  any  but  the  wild  enthusiasts  who 
had  been  living  with  the  job  for  the  past  six 
months.  Pilots  are,  to  say  the  least,  fussy  about 
what  is  loaded  into  the  'planes  they  are  to  fly,  to 
say  nothing  of  the  trailing  wires  which  serve  as 


Function  of  Military  Aviation  209 

antennae.  Designers  and  constructors  hold  much 
the  same  view,  so  it  took  a  lot  of  maneuvering 
and  diplomatic  jockeying  to  get  our  stuff  aboard 
and  into  the  air.  Finally,  just  about  dark  on  the 
evening  before  the  fatal  day  we  did  get  one  ma- 
chine into  the  air,  and  found  that  the  apparatus 
worked. 

"The  plan  was  to  have  two  'planes  in  the  air 
at  once  and  for  the  official  party  to  listen  in  at  a 
ground  station  located  on  the  top  of  a  hill  on 
Moraine  Farm  near  the  field.  That  night  we  all 
congregated  in  one  of  the  rooms  of  the  hotel, 
worked  out  our  scenario,  and  held  a  rehearsal.  I 
must  confess  that  I  didn't  sleep  very  well  that 
night.  Next  day  we  were  out  at  the  field  bright 
and  early,  fussing  around  trying  to  keep  busy  until 
it  was  time  for  the  big  show.  Upon  arrival  of  the 
exalted  ones  we  showed  them  the  apparatus  in 
the  'planes  and  explained  what  it  was  expected 
to  do. 

"They  went  to  our  little  station  on  the  hill, 
where  we  had  rigged  up  a  loud-speaking  receiver 
connected  to  the  wireless  apparatus  so  that  all 
could  hear  without  the  use  of  head  sets.  The 
'planes  left  the  ground  and  after  what  seemed  an 
interminable  length  of  time  we  got  the  first  sounds 
in  the  receiver  which  indicated  that  they  were 
14 


210  Wings  of  War 

ready  to  perform.  The  spectators  were  only  mildly 
interested  and  some  seemed  a  bit  bored. 

"Suddenly  out  of  the  horn  of  the  loud  speaker 
came  the  words,  'Hello,  ground  station.  This  is 
'Plane  No.  I  speaking.  Do  you  get  me  all  right?' 
The  bored  expression  immediately  faded  and  looks 
of  amazement  came  over  all  their  faces. 

"Soon  we  got  the  same  signal  from  No.  2  and 
the  show  was  on.  Under  command  from  the 
ground  the  'planes  were  maneuvered  all  over  that 
part  of  the  country.  They  were  sent  on  scouting 
expeditions  and  reported  what  they  saw  as  they 
traveled  through  the  air.  Continuous  conversa- 
tion was  carried  on,  even  when  the  'planes  were 
out  of  sight,  and  finally  upon  command  they  came 
flying  back  out  of  space  and  landed  as  directed. 

"From  that  moment  the  radio  telephone  was 
sold." 

Another  form  of  radio  adaptation  enables  the 
observer  to  locate  his  position  with  reference  to 
certain  fixed  points  by  means  of  radio  signals  sent 
from  the  land.  In  this  radio  compass  development 
as  well  in  radio  telephony  the  United  States  was 
well  in  the  lead  both  in  engineering  and  in  pro- 
duction. 

Photography  is  essentially  the  means  of  aerial 
observation.  The  sensitive  plate  can  detect  at 


Function  of  Military  Aviation  211 

10,000  feet  what  the  eye  does  not  perceive;  more- 
over, it  records  as  it  observes.  Aerial  photog- 
raphy made  the  recent  war  unlike  all  others, 
because  it  supplied  such  accurate  information  of 
enemy  dispositions  and  lines  of  entrenchments, 
roads,  supply  bases,  etc.,  that  each  side  was  about 
as  well  informed  of  such  enemy  affairs  as  of  its  own. 
Combined  with  direct  visual  observation  it  also 
made  it  very  difficult  to  move  large  bodies  of 
troops  to  new  positions  without  detection.  Thus 
surprises  became  'very  difficult,  and  were  only 
possible  by  night  marches  and  the  utilization  of 
weather  unfavorable  for  observation.  The  chief 
value  of  aerial  photography  lies  in  its  map-making 
possibilities,  and  cameras  were  developed  that 
automatically  mapped  the  underlying  country  as 
the  airplane  moved  over  it,  even  at  great  heights. 
Aerial  photography  militarily  applied  was  en- 
tirely new  at  the  beginning  of  the  war  in  Europe 
but  it  developed  with  great  rapidity,  so  that  when 
the  United  States  came  in  it  was  utterly  unpre- 
pared in  this  regard,  the  nations  at  war  having,  of 
course,  kept  developments  and  inventions  to  them- 
selves. Apparatus  had  become  very  refined,  and 
highly  specialized  and  complicated.  Some  work 
in  aerial  photography  had  been  done  in  this  coun- 
try by  Arthur  Brock,  Jr.,  of  Philadelphia;  the 


212  Wings  of  War 

G.  E.  M.  Engineering  Company  of  Philadelphia, 
and  the  Eastman  Kodak  Company  of  Rochester, 
N.  Y.  Also  the  Signal  Corps  and  the  Bureau  of 
Standards  had  given  some  study  to  mapping  cam- 
eras. The  Allies  soon  communicated  their  knowl- 
edge and  experience,  but  it  was  necessary  for 
our  manufacturers  to  make  the  equipment,  and 
improve  on  it  if  possible.  Both  these  things 
were  done,  and  before  the  war  was  over,  1164 
automatic  aeronautical  cameras  had  been  made 
complete  with  their  spring  suspensions  to  offset 
vibration,  motors,  and  other  accessories. 

This  figure  refers  only  to  the  mapping  cameras. 
Large  quantities  of  hand  cameras  and  photo- 
graphic accessories  of  every  kind  were  supplied. 
The  amount  of  supplies  procured  and  forwarded 
was  prodigious.  During  the  Argonne  advance  in 
four  days  alone  the  American  observers  took 
100,000  pictures  of  the  enemy  line.  The  number 
of  prints  of  these  pictures  is  not  given  but  in  the 
British  service  as  high  as  280,000  prints  were 
issued  in  a  single  month.  It  was  the  excellence 
of  the  photographic  equipment  as  well  as  the  pro- 
vision of  a  sufficient  number  of  airplanes  to  hold 
and  use  them,  that  enabled  General  Pershing  to 
state  that  "no  army  ever  went  out  with  the  infor- 
mation as  to  what  was  in  front  of  it  as  the  Ameri- 


Function  of  Military  Aviation   213 

can  army  did  in  St.  Mihiel  and  the  Argonne." 
This  authoritative  statement  is  sufficient  answer 
to  the  captious  critics  who  were  wont  to  assert 
bitterly  that  our  army  fought  "blind"  in  France. 

The  development  and  making  of  the  peculiar 
sort  of  lens  required  to  take  detail  photographs 
at  great  heights,  the  devising  of  ray  filters  to  over- 
come haze,  were  scientific,  technical,  and  mechani- 
cal problems  of  the  utmost  difficulty.  And  yet,  it 
has  been  well  said  that  the  cameras  themselves 
were  only  the  beginning  of  successful  aerial  photog- 
raphy. Among  the  articles  and  supplies  that  had 
to  be  provided  in  great  quantity  were  lenses,  paper, 
plates,  chemicals,  tanks,  trays,  printing  machines, 
sterescopes,  and  traveling  dark  rooms.  In  the 
month  of  October  alone  more  than  1,500,000  half 
sheets  of  photographic  paper  were  shipped  and 
300,000  dry  plates,  more  than  20,000  rolls  of  film 
and  forty  tons  of  chemicals.  . 

The  placing  of  photographic  and  radio  appa- 
ratus in  the  airplane  was  one  of  the  problems  that 
gave  the  'plane  designers  trouble.  And  these  were 
only  a  part  of  the  equipment  for  which  the  right 
place  and  sufficient  space  had  to  be  obtained.  It 
was  nothing  less  than  a  complex,  time-killing 
puzzle.  And  if  placing  and  the  necessary  design- 
ing and  redesigning  were  a  limitation  on  produc- 


214  Wings  of  War 

tion  it  is  an  equally  important  fact  that  the  limit 
of  effective  production  of  the  'planes  themselves 
depends  on  the  accessories.  An  airplane  without 
the  military  accessories  is  as  useless  as  an  untrained 
civilian  is  as  a  soldier. 

So,  making  airplanes  for  the  war  was  not  only  a 
matter  of  engines,  wings,  and  fuselages,  but  it  was 
that  of  photographic  equipment,  oxygen  appa- 
ratus, aerial  navigating  instruments,  radio,  guns, 
bombs  and  bombing  apparatus,  rockets,  flares, 
special  clothing  and  personal  equipment  for  the 
aviator,  and  much  besides.  The  development  or 
adaptation  of  all  this  apparatus  as  well  as  its  man- 
ufacture had  to  go  forward  parallel  to  that  of  the 
airplanes  themselves.  In  fact,  the  problems  of  all 
sorts  were  so  complex  and  interrelated  that  the 
aircraft  managers  stoically  abandoned  as  a  thing 
impossible  an  explanation  that  would  adequately 
answer  the  criticisms  that  were  showered  upon 
them.  One  had  to  be  on  the  inside  to  understand, 
and  being  there  he  was  condemned  to  suffer  in 
bitter  silence  uninformed  fault-finding  that  was 
at  times  little  short  of  scurrilous. 


CHAPTER  XXII 

AIRPLANE  BOMBS,  AERIAL  PYROTECHNICS,  AND 
AVIATORS'  PERSONAL  EQUIPMENT,  ETC. 

IT  is  not  possible  in  a  brief  work  to  discuss  in 
detail  the  important  subject  of  airplane  equipment. 
Machine  guns  and  photographic  equipment  have 
been  described  briefly  and  a  short  account  of  air- 
plane bombs,  aerial  pyrotechnics,  and  aviators' 
personal  equipment  such  as  clothing  and  the  oxy- 
gen apparatus  will  be  given  in  this  chapter. 

Bombs  had  been  dropped  from  airplanes  during 
the  Italian  Tripolitan  campaign  and  American 
aviators  serving  with  Mexican  civil  war  forces  had 
used  them.  The  German  Zeppelins  were  the  first 
aircraft  to  attempt  to  use  bombs  systematically. 
At  first,  however,  they  were  not  very  effective 
because  not  properly  designed  and  incapable  of 
accurate  aiming.  Owing  to  the  fact  that  an  air- 
plane is  moving  rapidly  when  the  bomb  is  dis- 
charged it  describes  a  curve  as  it  falls,  and  must 
therefore  be  released  before  the  airplane  is  directly 

215 


2i6  Wings  of  War 

over  the  object  it  is  desired  to  hit.  The  proper 
shape  is  somewhat  like  that  of  a  torpedo  with  a 
fin-tail  to  hold  the  bomb  in  the  proper  position. 
Traps  or  release  mechanisms  must  be  provided 
that  will  detach  the  bombs  from  their  storage 
places  beneath  the  fuselage,  or  the  wings,  or  in  the 
case  of  the  large  bombers  from  inside  the  fuselage. 
To  promote  accuracy  of  projection,  bomb  sights 
must  be  provided.  These  devices  are  ingeniously 
arranged  so  that  when  adjusted  to  height,  speed, 
and  wind,  the  bringing  of  two  sighting  points  into 
line  gives  the  aim.  During  the  war  there  were  pro- 
duced in  the  United  States  8371  of  these  sights, 
following  the  English  Wimperis  model.  Releasing 
traps  were  provided  for  all  the  machines  that  were 
designed  to  carry  bombs. 

Three  general  kinds  of  bombs  were  made,  viz., 
demolition,  fragmentation,  and  incendiary.  The 
demolition  bombs,  used  against  buildings  and  earth- 
works, were  made  in  weights  of  50,  100,  250,  500, 
and  looo  pounds.  Such  bombs  are  made  with  a 
light  steel  casing  filled  with  T.  N.  T.  or  some  other 
high  explosive  and  have  a  detonating  mechanism 
that  is  made  ready  for  action  on  contact  at  the 
moment  it  is  released  from  its  position.  Most  of 
these  bombs  were  of  the  100-  and  25O-pound  sizes. 
The  fragmentation  bombs  usually  weigh  about 


.11 

Is 

J3    .. 


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5 

Q 

•O 


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s 


Airplane  Equipment          217 

20  pounds,  have  a  thicker  case  than  the  demoli- 
tion bombs  and  are  arranged  to  explode  a  few 
inches  above  the  ground.  These  bombs  are  used 
against  personnel  and  depend  for  effect  upon  the 
scattering  of  the  fragments.  Incendiary  bombs 
weigh  about  50  pounds  and  are  loaded  with  oil 
emulsion,  thermit,  and  metallic  sodium  which  upon 
the  explosion  of  the  bomb  burn  with  intense  heat 
for  a  few  minutes.  These  bombs  are  used  par- 
ticularly against  ammunition  dumps  and  for  the 
purpose  of  starting  fires. 

Had  the  war  continued  another  six  months,  the 
American  aircraft  producers  would  have  treated 
the  Germans  to  a  surprise,  comparable  only  to  the 
introduction  of  poisonous  gas  and  tanks  as  weapons 
of  war.  A  small  and  inexpensive  automatic  air- 
plane, fitted  with  a  specially  adapted  Sperry  gyro- 
scope as  a  stabilizer  had  been  secretly  devised  and 
developed  and  conclusively  tested.  Loaded  with 
several  hundred  pounds  of  T.  N.  T.,  it  would  follow 
a  set  course  to  a  distance  of  forty  or  fifty  miles  or 
more  and  then,  at  the  predetermined  place,  would 
shed  its  wings,  the  fuselage  plunging  to  the  ground 
as  a  huge  bomb.  All  preparations  had  been  made 
to  manufacture  and  send  100,000  of  these  engines 
of  destruction  to  the  front.  It  was  confidently 
believed  that  they  would  have  turned  the  German 


2i8  Wings  of  War 

bases,  supply  depots,  mobilization  centers,  lines  of 
communication,  and  garrison  posts,  into  a  chaos  of 
fire  and  explosion  unprecedented  in  those  respects 
even  in  the  world  war. 

Pyrotechnics  were  used  during  the  war  by  the 
aerial  forces  to  signal  to  and  from  the  ground  or 
back  and  forth  in  the  air.  For  this  purpose  service 
airplanes  carry  a  signal  pistol  known  as  the  "Very  " 
pistol.  Its  ammunition  consists  of  cartridges  not 
unlike  those  of  a  shotgun  shell  but  larger,  and  are 
in  effect  the  ordinary  Roman  candle.  The  cart- 
ridges come  in  three  colors,  red,  green,  and  white, 
and  by  using  these  colors  in  different  combina- 
tions a  large  number  of  different  signals  is  possible. 
The  stars  are  visible  in  the  daytime  as  well  as  at 
night.  Special  use  of  the  pistol  at  night  time  is  to 
enable  the  pilot  to  signal  his  approach  to  the  home 
landing-ground.  The  pistols  have  also  been  used 
to  enable  the  aviator  to  carry  out  his  orders  to 
destroy  his  machine  in  case  of  landing  in  enemy 
territory  by  firing  into  inflammable  parts  of  the 
airplane.  This  is  one  of  the  few  items  of  airplane 
equipment  that  was  purchased  abroad  and  was 
not  made  at  home.  To  facilitate  night-landing, 
wing-tip  flares  are  also  used.  These  consist  of  a 
small  cylinder  of  magnesium  material  in  a  metallic 
holder,  one  being  fitted  under  each  lower  wing  of 


Airplane  Equipment          219 

the  'plane,  and  can  be  ignited  by  means  of  an  elec- 
tric current.  In  making  a  night-landing  these 
flares  when  lighted  brilliantly  illuminate  the 
ground  beneath. 

The  airplane  flare  proper  is  used  for  illuminat- 
ing enemy  territory  during  night-bombing  raids. 
Each  weighs  about  thirty-two  pounds  and  is  con- 
tained in  a  cylindrical  sheet-iron  case,  the  illumi- 
nating charge  being  capable  of  giving  a  light  of 
thirty-two  thousand  candle  power  for  about  ten 
minutes.  The  flare  is  attached  to  a  silk  parachute, 
so  attached  to  the  airplane  that  it  can  be  easily 
released.  Immediately  after  discharge  from  the 
case  the  parachute  opens  and  so  lowers  the  flare 
slowly  to  the  ground,  the  light  from  it  brightly 
illuminating  a  large  area  underneath.  An  inci- 
dental effect  of  the  flares  is  to  dazzle  the  eyes  of 
anti-aircraft  gunners  so  that  their  aim  is  very  in- 
accurate. They  are  also  of  value  in  obtaining 
aerial  photographs  at  night.  American  production 
of  these  flares  was  just  starting  when  the  war 
terminated. 

Even  such  apparently  insignificant  matter  as 
obtaining  suitable  clothing  for  aviators  was  in 
effect  one  of  no  little  difficulty.  At  first  like  almost 
everything  else  connected  with  the  aviation  effort 
it  was  not  known  just  what  was  the  proper  apparel 


220  Wings  of  War 

equipment  for  an  aviator,  or  a  balloonist.  It  was 
necessary  that  the  clothing  should  be  as  warm  as 
possible  without  being  cumbersome,  also  that  it 
should  be  strong  and  durable  and  that  each  part 
should  be  adapted  to  the  others.  The  head-gear 
consisted  of  a  woolen  hood  of  double  thickness, 
having  between  its  layers  an  electrically  heated 
unit  connected  with  an  air-driven  generator  on  the 
'plane,  by  copper  wires  that  also  extended  through 
the  suit  proper.  A  soft  leather  helmet  lined  with 
fur  was  worn  over  this  and  the  face  was  entirely 
covered  with  a  leather  mask  lined  with  wool  with 
an  opening  for  the  eyes  over  which  was  fitted  a 
pair  of  goggles.  When  using  the  radio  a  special 
radio  helmet  was  worn  in  place  of  the  fur-lined 
helmet,  so  fashioned  as  to  hold  the  receivers  of  the 
wireless  telephone  over  the  ears. 

The  body  clothing  consisted  of  a  one-piece  flying 
suit  extended  from  the  feet  to  the  throat,  belted 
and  tightly  buttoned  at  ankles  and  wrists  and  lined 
throughout  with  fur.  One  of  the  little  big  prob- 
lems of  the  war  was  the  securing  of  enough  of 
the  right  kind  of  fur  for  this  purpose.  Chinese 
Nuchwang  dogskin  was  chosen  for  this  purpose  and 
it  demanded  practically  all  of  the  skins  that  could 
be  obtained  in  both  this  country  and  China,  and 
nearly  five  hundred  thousand  of  such  skins  were 


*v 


''tfr^A'  s*,/4 


"^,^1 

^/4/-<Jk 


Aviator's  Oxygen  Mask  in  Position,  Ready  for  Use 


Airplane  Equipment  221 

obtained.  Through  these  suits  between  the  fur 
and  outer  covering  were  placed  wire  cables  ending 
in  snap-fasteners  at  the  wrists,  ankles  and  neck 
to  which  could  be  attached  a  silk  covered  wire 
leading  to  the  electrical-heating  units  in  the  gloves, 
moccasins,  and  helmets,  all  of  which  were  elec- 
trically warmed.  For  the  hands,  besides  the  elec- 
trically heated  gloves  was  provided  a  pair  of 
muskrat  fur  gauntlets  extending  well  up  the  arms 
and  so  designed  as  to  allow  the  trigger  fingers  to  re- 
main in  a  fur-lined  pocket  or  be  withdrawn  from  it 
when  necessary  without  removing  the  glove.  On  the 
feet  were  worn  both  electrically  heated  socks  and 
electrically- warmed  moccasins  extended  well  over 
the  calf  of  the  leg  and  lined  with  heavy  sheep 
wool.  Of  course,  there  were  many  other  items 
of  aviators'  clothing,  such  as  sweaters,  leather 
coats,  fur-lined  coats,  and  two  styles  of  hard 
helmets  used  mostly  by  students  and  obser- 
vers, and  many  different  kinds  of  goggles.  As 
a  result  of  the  great  care  taken  in  these  mat- 
ters it  was  generally  acknowledged  that  our 
flyers  were  by  far  the  best  and  most  efficiently 
equipped  at  the  front.  More  than  50,000  fur- 
lined  flying  suits,  over  100,000  leather  helmets, 
more  than  100,000  leather  coats,  and  over  80,000 
goggles  were  included  in  a  personal  equipment 


222  Wings  of  War 

program  that  involved  an  expenditure  of  more 
than  $5,000,000. 

In  high-flight  work  it  was  also  necessary  for  the 
aviators  to  wear  oxygen  masks  made  of  rubber 
containing  a  transmitter  allowing  the  aviator  to 
speak  as  well  as  hear  by  wireless.  This  mask  was 
attached  to  a  tube  leading  to  a  tank  of  oxygen 
carried  in  a  convenient  place  in  the  'plane  and  so 
adjusted  as  automatically  to  feed  to  the  aviator 
different  amounts  of  oxygen  as  different  altitudes 
were  attained. 

This  oxygen  apparatus  is  so  important  that  it 
is  not  possible  to  give  a  sufficient  account  of  it  in 
a  brief  space.  Its  purpose  was  to  supply  aviators 
with  the  right  proportions  of  oxygen  when  flying 
in  the  rarified  air  of  great  altitudes,  which  the 
increasing  range  of  anti-aircraft  guns  made  neces- 
sary, it  having  been  found  that  the  efficiency  and 
health  of  the  airmen  were  greatly  impaired  on 
account  of  lack  of  enough  oxygen  at  high  altitudes. 
The  American  aircraft  producers  had  to  take  a  hand- 
made apparatus  of  French  design  and  adapt  it  to 
American  manufacturing  methods,  while  also  im- 
proving it.  It  was  the  same  story  as  with  almost 
everything  brought  from  Europe  for  American 
adaptation,  and  presented  the  usual  problems  and 
difficulties,  all  of  which  were  successfully  overcome. 


I 

u 

c 

o 
I 

.5 
•S 

ol 
§ 


i 

e 


Airplane  Equipment  223 

The  work  began  in  January,  1918,  quantity  pro- 
duction was  attained  in  May  and  by  October  one 
thousand  sets  were  being  turned  out  monthly,  the 
shipments  to  France  totaling  near  four  thousand. 

The  realization  that  the  varying  degrees  of  oxy- 
gen at  different  heights  was  the  major  influence  on 
the  efficiency  of  aviators  led  to  searching  studies  of 
the  adaptability  of  aviators  to  different  heights  and 
resulted  in  a  remarkably  efficient  method  of  deter- 
mining the  aviator's  limitations,  so  that  aviators 
came  to  be  put  in  different  classes  according  to  the 
heights  at  which  they  could  successfully  fly. 

One  of  the  aviation  accessories  successfully  de- 
veloped by  the  Signal  Corps  equipment  division 
was  the  machine-gun  camera  which  was  used  to 
teach  aviators  how  to  shoot  accurately  with  ma- 
chine guns.  Obviously,  in  practice  aviators  cannot 
have  airplanes  for  targets  with  actual  machine-gun 
bullets.  This  raised  the  question  as  to  how  stu- 
dents could  be  prepared  in  advance  for  the  actual 
experiences  of  battles  in  the  air.  The  machine-gun 
camera  was  the  answer.  It  is  simply  a  regulation 
Lewis  machine  gun  with  a  roll  of  films  sustituted 
for  the  cartridge  belt.  The  aviator  works  the  gun 
precisely  as  if  he  were  firing  bullets,  but  instead 
of  doing  so  he  takes  pictures  of  his  target  and  the 
film  record  shows  the  accuracy  of  his  aim.  This 


224  Wings  of  War 

was  a  bit  of  war  preparation  unknown  to  the 
Germans  and  they  therefore  marveled  at  the  accu- 
rate marksmanship  of  our  cub  aviators  in  their  first 
battles  in  the  air. 


CHAPTER  XXIII 

MILITARY  BAIXOONS 

IT  is  an  interesting  fact  that  the  development 
of  the  airplane  to  its  present  degree  of  effective- 
ness has  not  held  back  the  utilization  of  the  sta- 
tionary balloon  in  warfare.  Concentration  of 
attention  on  the  airplane  undoubtedly  resulted  in 
the  Allies  giving  less  attention  to  mobile  balloons 
or  dirigibles  than  they  would  otherwise,  and  pre- 
vious to  the  use  of  helium  gas  because  of  its  non- 
inflammability,  as  well  as  for  other  reasons,  the 
general  policy  of  the  Allies  in  this  respect  was  most 
wise.  On  the  whole,  the  German  Zeppelins  were 
not  a  military  success,  though  more  because  of  their 
inflammability  than  for  any  other  cause.  They 
were  of  great  aid  to  the  German  fleet  in  the  North 
Sea,  as  scouts;  and  with  the  use  of  helium  and 
other  improvements  will  loom  large  in  the  future 
of  aeronautics. 

Early  in  the  war  it  was  found  that  for  observa- 
tion purposes  anchored  or  kite  balloons  had 
is  225 


226  Wings  of  War 

tain  advantages  over  the  rapidly  moving  airplanes, 
and  toward  the  end  they  were  more  relied  on  than 
airplanes  for  control  of  artillery  fire. 

France  and  England  had  devoted  some  atten- 
tion to  the  modern  type  of  observation  balloon — 
the  stream-line  or  so-called  "sausage"  type,  and 
Germany  a  good  deal,  but  as  in  all  other  things 
pertaining  to  aerial  warfare  America  was  much 
behind.  The  German  Drachen  type,  though 
crude  compared  with  later  developments,  was 
much  superior  to  anything  the  Allies  had,  and  the 
numbers  of  them  possessed  by  the  Germans  gave 
them  a  distinct  advantage  in  control  of  artillery 
fire  in  the  first  part  of  the  war.  Captain  Caquot 
of  the  French  army  met  the  situation  with  a  kite 
balloon  that  had  superior  stability  in  high  winds 
and  that  could  operate  at  higher  altitude  than  the 
Drachen,  and  it  came  into  general  use  by  the 
armies  and  navies  of  France,  England,  and  America 
and  was  imitated  by  the  Germans.  The  somewhat 
grotesque  appearance  of  these  balloons  is  due  to 
the  air  lobes  attached  to  the  rear  third  of  the  gas 
envelope,  which  are  filled  with  air  by  the  action 
of  the  wind  and  give  the  balloon  stability.  The 
Caquot  also  has  an  ingenious  device  for  offsetting 
the  leakage  of  gas,  with  a  view  to  keeping  the  sur- 
face of  the  envelope  firm  and  symmetrical.  It 


A  Navy  4 '  Blimp  "— Non-Rigid  Dirigible— in  the  Air 


Military  Balloons  227 

consists  of  an  air  chamber  within  the  gas-contain- 
ing envelope  which  fills  and  expands  as  the  gas 
pressure  decreases  on  account  of  leakage. 

The  United  States  army  had  used  one  captive 
balloon  on  the  Mexican  border,  and  though 
European  developments  in  balloons  had  been 
closely  watched  there  was  little  manufacturing 
capacity  for  them  in  this  country  and  many  quan- 
tity manufacturing  problems  had  to  be  dealt  with. 
So,  the  heavily  burdened  Equipment  Division  of 
the  Signal  Corps,  later  to  become  the  Bureau  of 
Aircraft  Production,  had  to  wrestle  with  another 
great  task.  Only  two  or  three  balloons  a  month 
were  then  being  made,  and  plans  and  specifica- 
tions for  the  approved  types  were  lacking.  Bal- 
loon making  was  the  opportunity  of  the  rubber 
companies  for  patriotic  service  and  they  responded 
energetically  and  cordially,  the  Goodyear  and 
Goodrich  companies  at  Akron,  Ohio,  taking  the 
lead  and  being  followed  later  by  the  United  States 
Rubber  Company,  the  Firestone  Tire  &  Rubber 
Company,  the  Connecticut  Aircraft  Company,  and 
the  Knabenshue  Manufacturing  Company. 

A  Caquot  "R"  type  of  kite  balloon  is  93  feet 
long  and  28  feet  at  its  greatest  diameter,  thus  re- 
quiring a  great  yardage  of  rubberized  cloth  for  the 
envelope;  in  fact  an  output  of  10  balloons  a  day 


228  Wings  of  War 

required  600,000  yards  of  special  balloon  cloth, 
the  toil  of  many  hundreds  of  weavers,  and  the  use 
of  3200  looms.  Balloon  cloth,  proper,  is  made  of 
cotton  and  must  be  made  with  the  greatest  care 
with  140  threads  to  the  inch  both  ways.  Very 
little  such  cloth  had  been  made  in  the  United 
States  and  because  of  the  difficulties  of  training 
weavers,  the  wastage  from  imperfections,  and  the 
small  possible  output  per  loom,  manufacturers 
were  reluctant  to  undertake  contracts.  At  first 
the  wastage  was  as  high  as  60  per  cent.,  but 
with  increasing  skill  was  reduced  to  10  per  cent. 
To  see  that  perfect  cloth  was  produced  the  gov- 
ernment and  the  manufacturers  had  to  em- 
ploy and  train  hundreds  of  inspectors.  Thous- 
ands of  men  had  to  be  instructed  in  making  the 
cloth. 

It  was  a  tedious  process  to  develop  and  expand 
this  cloth-making  industry,  but  by  November, 
1918,  the  American  capacity  had  increased  from 
enough  for  two  balloons  a  day  in  April,  1917,  to 
sufficient  for  ten  a  day.  Moreover,  the  output  was 
always  abreast  or  ahead  of  the  balloon-making 
program.  In  ordinary  times  such  an  industrial 
achievement  would  have  been  a  seven-days'  won- 
der, but  it  was  lost  sight  of  in  the  whole  mountain 
range  of  unusual  manufacturing  deeds  during  the 


Military  Balloons  229 

war,  and  entirely  overlooked  in  judging  the  aircraft 
managers. 

After  the  cotton  cloth  is  made  it  has  to  be  rub- 
berized in  order  to  make  an  air-tight  fabric.  This 
meant  the  development  of  another  specialized  in- 
dustry. The  fabric  consists  of  a  film  of  specially 
made  rubber  between  sheets  of  the  cloth,  and  the 
outside  cloth  ply  is  covered  with  a  rubber  compound 
which  serves  as  protection  against  moisture  and  the 
actinic  rays  of  the  sun  and  for  a  camouflage.  In 
blending  the  cotton  cloth  and  the  rubber  film,  the 
fabric  is  sometimes  put  through  the  presses  thirty- 
five  or  forty  times.  While  American  manufactur- 
ing of  this  fabric  followed  European  practice  in  the 
main,  there  were  some  departures  and  the  Ameri- 
can article  was  regarded  as  superior,  chiefly  be- 
cause it  was  slower  burning.  This  was  an  important 
consideration  for  it  was  the  common  fate  of  obser- 
vation balloons  to  be  set  afire  sooner  or  later  and 
a  slow-burning  fabric  gave  the  observers  more  time 
to  take  to  their  parachutes  and  escape. 

A  necessary  accompaniment  of  the  balloons  was 
the  machinery  and  apparatus  to  operate  them  suc- 
cessfully. Windlasses  had  to  be  built  for  the  pur- 
pose of  letting  up  and  pulling  down  the  balloons, 
and  these  had  to  be  of  great  strength  and  high 
speed.  As  the  French  had  developed  a  satisfactory 


230  Wings  of  War 

windlass,  it  was  put  into  production  in  this  coun- 
try to  be  on  the  safe  side  while  the  American  types 
were  being  developed.  This  task  was  successfully 
undertaken  by  the  James  Cunningham,  Sons  & 
Company,  of  Rochester,  N.  Y.  The  first  American 
windlasses  were  operated  by  steam,  but  later  elec- 
tricity and  gasoline  motors  were  used.  The  best- 
known  gasoline  type  had  one  motor  to  operate  the 
windlass  and  the  other  to  move  it  from  place  to 
place.  This  kind  could  pull  down  a  balloon  at  a 
rate  of  sixteen  hundred  feet  a  minute,  and  travel 
unimpeded  at  the  rate  of  twenty  miles  an  hour,  or 
at  five  miles  with  the  balloon  in  tow.  The  United 
States  Army  Balloon  School  developed  one  type 
of  windlass,  which  was  manufactured  by  the 
Me  Keen  Motor  Car  Company  of  Omaha,  and  an- 
other was  developed  and  made  by  the  N.  C.  L.  En- 
gineering Company  of  Providence,  R.  I. 

Another  manufacturing  achievement  worthy  of 
mention  was  the  designing  and  making  of  a  special 
anchor  cable,  which  also  enclosed  the  telephone 
wire  cable  by  means  of  which  the  observer  com- 
municated with  the  ground,  thus  doing  away  with 
separate  telephone  cables,  which  had  been  a  great 
nuisance.  The  Chas.  A.  Roebling  &  Sons  Com- 
pany and  the  American  Steel  and  Wire  Company 
cooperated  in  the  important  work. 


6-Cylinder,  loo-H.  P.  Rear  Windlass  Engine   Caterpillar,  Tractor  Adapter, 
for  Towing  and  Controlling  Observation  Balloons 


Caquot  "Sausage"  Balloon,  Beginning  Its  Ascent 
U.  S.  Air  Service  Photo 


Military  Balloons  231 

Hydrogen  gas  is  the  buoyant  element  with  which 
balloon  envelopes  were  inflated.  Before  the  war  it 
was  manufactured  in  this  country  in  only  a  small 
by-product  way,  but  the  requirements  for  mil- 
lions of  cubic  feet  for  the  balloons  were  promptly 
met  by  new  government  plants  and  the  expan- 
sion of  private  plants.  Portable  hydrogen  gene- 
rators for  field  use  were  also  manufactured,  but  most 
of  the  hydrogen  was  made  in  the  United  States 
and  shipped  to  the  front  in  steel  containers,  of 
which  172,000  were  ordered  and  90,000  made, 
under  a  pressure  of  2000  pounds  to  the  square 
inch.  Before  the  armistice  was  signed  the  private 
manufacturers  alone  had  made  and  delivered  near 
18,000,000  cubic  feet  of  hydrogen.  The  special 
problems  of  the  field  generators  were  in  themselves 
manifold,  as  were  those  of  many  other  balloon 
materials  and  accessories,  such  as  the  parachutes, 
rigging  cordage,  and  "nurse"  balloons,  which  car- 
ried reserve  gas  for  the  service  balloons. 

As  the  war  approached  its  end,  the  balloon  sec- 
tion achieved  its  most  original  success,  in  the  prac- 
tical utilization  of  non-inflammable  helium  gas,  a 
fact  that  was  a  military  secret  until  after  hostilities 
ceased,  the  gas  being  disguised  verbally  as  "argon." 
Using  it  instead  of  hydrogen,  balloons  and  dirig- 
ibles eliminated  fire-risk  from  enemy  action,  light- 


232  Wings  of  War 

ning,  and  whatever  cause,  thus  overcoming  the 
chief  obstacle  to  safe  employment  of  airships. 
Helium  was  known  before  the  war,  but  its  produc- 
tion was  so  small  and  it  was  so  costly,  being  worth 
$1700  a  cubic  foot,  that  it  was  not  to  be  immedi- 
ately considered  as  a  substitute  for  hydrogen.  It 
was  known,  however,  that  it  was  to  be  found  in 
small  proportions  in  some  of  the  natural  gases  of 
the  United  States,  and  with  financial  assistance 
from  the  Signal  Corps,  Navy,  and  Bureau  of  Mines, 
the  last  two  supervising  the  experiments,  satisfac- 
tory production  was  attained  by  the  gas  liquefac- 
tion processes  known  as  the  Norton  and  those  of 
the  Linde  Air  Products  Company  and  of  the  Air 
Reduction  Company.  So  far  had  this  work  pro- 
gressed that  on  the  day  the  armistice  was  signed 
147,000  cubic  feet  of  helium  were  ready  to  be 
loaded  on  ships  for  France,  and  a  permanent  plant 
was  building  with  a  capacity  for  treating  5,000,000 
cubic  feet  of  natural  gas  daily,  at  an  estimated  cost 
of  ten  cents  a  cubic  foot  for  the  realized  helium. 
At  100  per  cent,  efficiency  the  product  would  be 
50,000  feet  daily. 

The  Norton  process  was  an  entirely  new  system 
of  liquefaction  of  natural  gas  and  was  taken  up 
by  the  Bureau  of  Mines.  The  so-called  Norton 
plant  was  established  at  Petrolia,  Texas.  The  need 


Military  Balloons  233 

for  the  cheap  and  abundant  production  of  such  a 
gas  as  helium  was  so  great  that  soon  after  work  on 
the  Norton  process  was  started  the  British  sent 
two  high  naval  officers  to  the  United  States  to 
urge  that  the  American  Government  use  all  pos- 
sible means  to  rush  the  production  of  helium. 
With  a  view  to  doing  so,  therefore,  contracts  were 
made  with  the  Linde  Air  Products  Company  and 
the  Air  Reduction  Company  for  the  erection  of 
experimental  plants  at  Ft.  Worth,  Texas.  The 
Linde  Company  began  operations  on  March  6, 
1918,  and  these  were  so  successful  that  a  large  pro- 
duction plant  using  the  same  process  was  under- 
taken by  the  army,  and  this  plant  is  of  permanent 
construction  and  will  begin  producing  helium  gas 
at  the  actual  rate  of  30,000  feet  a  day  and  at  a 
cost  of  about  five  cents  a  foot,  sometime  in  the 
middle  of  1920.  The  Air  Reduction  Company 
plant  went  into  operation  on  May  ist,  and  while 
it  produced  helium  it  was  not  so  successful  as  the 
Linde  process.  The  Norton  method  is  still  in 
the  experimental  stage,  but  if  it  should  succeed 
the  cost  will  be  lower  than  by  either  of  the  other 
methods.  To  facilitate  the  production  of  helium, 
the  construction  of  a  pipe-line  was  authorized  from 
Petrolia  to  the  plants  at  Ft.  Worth,  Texas,  and 
steps  were  taken  to  conserve  the  gas  production 


234  Wings  of  War 

of  the  Petrolia  pool,  thus  saving  an  enormous 
amount  of  helium  and  extending  the  life  of  the 
pool  over  a  period  of  approximately  ten  years. 
Helium  has  been  found  also  in  natural  gases  of 
Kansas,  Ohio,  and  Montana,  and  because  of  its  in- 
combustibility 500,000  cubic  feet  are  wasted  daily 
in  the  United  States. 

An  interesting  fact  about  helium  is  that  the 
United  States  contains  practically  all  of  the  known 
utilizable  sources.  Col.  A.  L.  Fuller  of  the  Army 
Air  Service  in  an  article  in  Air  Service  comments 
that  it  is  remarkable  that  an  element  once  un- 
known on  the  earth's  surface,  and  originally  dis- 
covered in  the  sun,  and  one  so  rare  before  the  war 
that  the  largest  quantity  ever  collected  in  one 
place  was  approximately  sixty  cubic  feet,  should 
now  be  used  in  the  enormous  quantities  necessary 
for  balloon  work.  It  is  quite  possible  that  the  new 
gas  besides  bringing  buoyant  airships  into  new 
favor  and  great  possibilities  may  have  many  scien- 
tific and  commercial  uses.  Already  it  has  been 
used  to  obtain  lower  temperatures  than  were  pos- 
sible by  any  other  means.  It  is  intended  to  locate 
all  possible  sources  of  helium  in  the  United  States 
and  conserve  them.  "Helium"  is  described  by 
Colonel  Fuller  as  "one  of  the  most  remarkable 
gases.  It  is  a  light,  monatomic  gas  and  the  light- 


I 

o 


O 


Military  Balloons  235 

est  of  rare  gases.  It  is  the  last  of  the  so-called 
perfect  gases  to  be  liquefied,  and  it  liquefies  at  a 
lower  temperature  than  any  other  gas.  It  is  one 
of  the  constituents  into  which  radium  breaks 
down  when  undergoing  a  transformation  which 
accompanies  radioactivity,  particles  of  helium  being 
given  off  as  the  different  types  of  the  radium  series 
are  changed." 

An  amusing  incident  of  the  helium  research 
work  was  that  some  members  of  Congress  having 
learned  that  Colonel  Deeds  and  Commander 
Atkins,  having  on  behalf  of  the  Aircraft  Board 
purchased  the  output  of  certain  natural  gas  wells 
in  Texas  of  such  a  poor  quality  that  it  could  not 
be  used  to  fry  eggs,  suspected  some  sort  of  corrupt 
intention,  and  started  an  informal  investigation 
which,  had  it  not  been  promptly  nipped,  might  have 
resulted  in  another  formal  Congressional  investi- 
gation of  aircraft  production.  It  was  with  consid- 
erable difficulty  that  it  was  made  plain  to  the  legis- 
lators, without  betraying  a  supremely  important 
military  secret,  that  the  one  reason  why  this  gas 
was  desirable  was  its  lack  of  heat  production. 

It  is  confidently  held  that  the  success  attained 
in  perfecting  methods  of  separating  helium  gas 
cheaply  will  greatly  widen  the  possibilities  of 
buoyant  aircraft  in  peace  as  well  as  in  war. 


236  Wings  of  War 

The  official  statistics  of  the  production  of  bal- 
loons and  accessories  in  the  United  States  during 
the  war  for  the  army  alone  are  as  follows : 

April  6,  1917 — November  n,  1918 

Balloons: 

Type  R,  observation 642 

Type  M,  observation 22 

Type  C,  observation 7 

Type  J,  observation I 

Experimental  observation 4 

Supply  balloons 129 

Spherical  balloons 10 

Propaganda  balloons 215 

Total i',Q3O 


Parachutes 285 

Windlasses 50 

Cable,  feet ' 1,221,582 

Gas  equipment : 

Hydrogen  cylinders 89,225 

Hydrogen,  cubic  feet  produced  by  pri- 
vate manufacturers 171634,353 

Helium,  cubic  feet 147,000 

The  above  production  for  the  army  provided, 
not  only  for  the  requirements  of  A.  E.  F.  and  the 
balloon  schools  in  the  United  States,  but  permitted 
furnishing  a  substantial  quantity  of  this  class  of 
equipment  to  the  Allies. 


Military  Balloons  237 

The  supply  balloons  mentioned  in  the  above 
table  are  simply  "nurse"  balloons  under  another 
name.  The  propaganda  balloons  are  small  bal- 
loons, carrying  propaganda  literature  with  an 
automatic  device  for  freeing  printed  leaflets  and 
pamphlets,  and  so  arranged  as  to  be  self -destructive 
when  the  balloon  ultimately  comes  to  earth. 
These  balloons  were  sent  over  the  enemy  lines 
when  the  weather  was  favorable. 

Although  as  yet  little  recognized,  the  balloon 
providing  achievements  of  the  aircraft  production 
department  constitute  one  of  the  industrial  feats 
of  fame  during  the  war.  Beginning,  like  the  air- 
planes, from  nothing,  like  their  development  too, 
it  attained  a  supreme  place  in  this  field  of  military 
endeavor. 


CHAPTER  XXIV 

TRAINING  FIELDS,  CAMPS,  AND  SUPPLY 

THE  construction  side  of  the  mammoth  aircraft 
enterprise  had  not  only  to  produce  the  flying 
machines  and  other  equipment  for  the  use  of  the 
fighting  and  training  personnel  but  it  had  to  pro- 
vide sites  and  facilities  for  their  use.  When  the 
war  began,  there  were  only  two  government  flying 
fields  in  America.  The  training  of  15,000  flyers 
and  the  assembling  and  organizing  of  the  190,000 
men  of  the  flying  service  required  an  enormous 
physical  establishment,  and  the  business  of  pro- 
viding, acquiring,  and  preparing  the  fields,  all  sorts 
of  supplies  for  the  men,  their  housing,  and  the  shops 
was  in  itself  a  task  that  would  have  sorely  tried  a 
highly  trained  and  developed  industrial  organiza- 
tion. It  involved  at  home  and  abroad  an  expendi- 
ture of  about  $80,000,000  and  everything  had  to  be 
done  with  feverish  haste,  which  even  when  realized 
seemed  in  the  nervous  tension  of  a  war  in  which 
every  minute  was  supremely  important,  all  too  slow. 

238 


Training  Fields  and  Camps    239 

Col.  C.  C.  Edgar,  on  recommendation  of  Col. 
Waldon,  was  put  in  charge  of  the  Supply  Division 
to  which  this  work  was  entrusted  and  he  later 
had  as  assistant  Lieut.-Col.  E.  Lester  Jones, 
who  was  granted  leave  of  absence  from  his  posi- 
tion as  director  of  the  U.  S.  Coast  and  Geodetic 
Survey  for  this  duty.  The  Supply  Division  was 
established  May  21,  1917,  and  in  the  next  u 
months  it  had  undertaken  47  main  projects  and 
completed  35  of  them,  not  counting  its  work  in 
connection  with  the  flying  school  and  aviation 
bases  in  France. 

The  home  establishments  included,  in  part,  15 
single-unit  flying  fields,  4  double-unit  fields,  3  con- 
centration camps,  3  balloon  schools,  5  supply 
depots,  3  repair  depots,  I  experimental  station, 
I  radio  laboratory,  3  mechanics'  schools,  I  artillery 
field,  4  acceptance  parks,  I  quarantine  camp,  and 
the  permanent  stations  at  Langley  Field  and  San 
Diego.  These  camps,  depots,  and  schools  were 
located  all  over  the  country,  from  Mineola  on  Long 
Island  to  San  Diego,  California,  and  from  Arcadia, 
Florida,  to  Minneapolis  and  St.  Paul,  though  most 
of  the  flying  fields  were  in  the  southern  part  of  the 
country,  for  climatic  reasons. 

The  following  is  a  list  of  construction  work  com- 
pleted or  in  progress  about  April  5,  1918: 


240  Wings  of  War 

LOCATION  DESCRIPTION  EST.  COST 

Americus,  Ga. 

Souther  Field I  four-squad,  camp $     812,100 

Souther  Field Warehouse 400,000 

Arcadia,  Fla. 

Carlstrom  Field I  four-squad,  camp 812,100 

Dorr  Field I  four-squad,  camp 812,000 

Belleville,  111.,  Scott  Field, I  four-squad,  camp 1,680,529 

Dallas,  Tex.,  Love  Field. .  I  four-squad,  camp 929,100 

Dallas,  Tex Repair  depot 551.500 

Dallas,  Tex.,  Concentra- 
tion Camp Miniature  range,  building, 

&  sundry  equipment  for 

existing  buildings 16,766 

Dayton,  O Supply  Depot 800,000 

McCook  Field Experimental  sta 1,000,000 

I   eight-squad,   camp,  in- 
cluding gunnery  school. .     3,097,777 

Fort  Omaha,  Nebr Balloon  school 493,266 

Florence  Field Add'l  balloon  outfit  unit. .          77,000 

Fort    Sill,    Okla.,    Post 
Field Aerial  observers'  camp. . . .     1,485,480 

Fort  Sill,  Okla Balloon  school 385,000 

Fort  Weed,  N.  Y Supply  depot,  addition  to 

building 47,000 

Fort  Worth,  Tex. 

Taliaferro,  No.  I I  four-squad,  camp 1,121,600 

Taliaferro,  No.  2 I  four-squad,  camp 1,007,100 

Taliaferro,  No.  3 I  four-squad,  camp 857,100 

Houston,  Tex.,  Ellington 
Field I  eight-squad,  camp 2,130,900 

Indianapolis,  Ind Repair  depot 582,000 

Lake  Charles,  La i  eight-squad,  camp 2,266,600 

Gerstner  Field 

Little  Silver,  N.  J. 
Camp  Alfred  Vail Radio  laboratory 368,350 

Lonoke,  Arkansas,  Eberts 
Field I  four-squad,  camp 812,100 

Memphis,    Tenn.,    Park 
Field , I  four-squad,  camp 1,769,600 

Middletown,  Pa Supply  depot 613,000 


Captive  Caquot  "Sausage"  Balloon 


Training  Fields  and  Camps    241 

LOCATION  DESCRIPTION  EST.  COST 

Mineola,  L.  I.,  Hazlehurst 

Field i  five-squad,  camp;  i  con- 
centration camp,  and  gen- 
eral aviation  supply  depot  $  4,2 1 8, 149 

Minneapolis,  Minn Mechanics'  school 150,000 

Montgomery,  Ala.,  Taylor 
Field i  four-squad,  camp 812,100 

Montgomery,  Ala Repair  depot 600,000 

Morrison,  Va Concentration  camp 1,603,100 

Mt.  Clemens,  Mich.,  Self- 
ridge  Field I  four-squad,  camp 2,903,203 

Rantoul,     111.,     Chanute 
Field i  four-squad,  camp 1,130,482 

Richmond,  Va Supply  depot 1,000,000 

Riverside,  Cal I  four-squad,  camp 800,000 

Sacramento,  Cal i  four-squad,  camp 850,000 

San  Antonio,  Tex.,  Kelly 

Field i  eight-squad,  camp;  i  con- 
centration camp;  2  stor- 
age warehouses 3498,555 

Brooks  Field I  four-squad,  camp 837,100 

Balloon  School 144,480 

San   Diego,   Cal.,   Rock- 
well Field Temporary  buildings,  con- 
struction of  bridge  and 
part  of  temporary  bldgs.    1,164,200 

Waco,  Tex. 

Rich  Field I  four-squad,  camp 1,016,600 

Camp  MacArthur Barracks    and    quarantine 

camp 192,000 

West  Point,  Miss.,  Payne 
Field i  four-squad,  camp 812,100 

Wichita  Falls,  Tex.,  Call 
Field i  four-squad,  camp 1,016,600 

Various  fields Additions  to  barracks 340,000 

Various  fields Architectural  services 150,000 

Sundry  projects 296,391 


Total $47,863,228 

16 


242  Wings  of  War 

The  advanced  training  school  and  field  at 
Issoudun  in  France  and  the  great  repair  and  assem- 
bly shops  at  Romorantin  and  the  whole  physical 
plant  for  the  maintenance  of  the  air  service  in 
France  required  the  assembling  and  forwarding  of 
a  vast  amount  of  material  and  machinery,  and  the 
erection  of  many  extensive  buildings,  hangars, 
warehouses,  shops,  etc.  In  addition  to  the  work 
that  was  done  by  contract  at  home  and  abroad,  it 
ultimately  required  49  construction  squadrons,  23 
construction  companies,  and  12  labor  companies, 
with  a  total  of  almost  13,600  officers  and  men  to 
do  the  work  that  was  performed  directly  by  the 
supply  division.  Of  these  men  about  6500  were 
sent  abroad.  The  assembly  shops  at  Romorantin 
were  on  such  a  scale  that  they  could  receive  and 
erect  daily  100  'planes  and  forward  them  to  the 
front.  The  repair  shops  were  of  sufficient  capacity 
to  handle  all  the  repairs  of  injured  and  "crashed" 
machines  from  the  front  and  from  the  school. 
The  field  shops  at  home  eventually  reached  such 
a  magnitude  that  it  is  calculated  that  they  were 
capable  of  building  200  'planes  a  week.  The 
actual  construction  work  in  France,  except  for  the 
aviation  school  and  the  hangars  that  were  origi- 
nally provided  or  diverted  from  American  fields 
was  attended  to  by  the  A.  E.  F. 


Training  Fields  and  Camps    243 

Three  weeks  after  the  building  of  the  aviation 
school  at  Issoudun  was  approved  by  the  Air  Prod. 
Board  all  the  materials  for  its  erection  were  on 
the  docks  in  New  York  harbor  accompanied  by 
two  hundred  mechanics  and  the  necessary  com- 
plement of  officers,  and  on  September  15,  1917, 
the  school  was  ready  for  use,  this  work  including 
the  building  of  seven  miles  of  standard  gauge  rail- 
way to  connect  the  field  with  the  railway  trunk  line. 

To  give  some  idea  of  the  great  amount  of  con- 
struction work  done  at  home  it  may  be  stated  that 
a  typical  single-unit  flying  field  and  school  called 
for  50  buildings  of  all  kinds,  occupying  a  space  % 
of  a  mile  long  by  about  600  feet  wide  with  graded 
and  macadamized  roadways,  railway  tracks,  water 
and  sewerage  systems,  lighting  plants,  etc.,  to  say 
nothing  of  the  grading  and  draining  of  the  field 
proper.  The  standard  plan  was  developed  by 
Albert  Kahn,  the  Detroit  architect,  from  the  basic 
scheme  worked  out  by  Cols.  Waldon  and  Edgar. 

An  idea  of  the  size  and  complexity  of  the  tasks  as- 
signed to  the  Supply  Division  may  be  gained  from  a 
recital  of  its  divisions  which  were :  executive,  build- 
ings and  grounds  Langley  Field  branch,  finance,  traf- 
fic and  storage,  engine  and  'plane maintenance,  avia- 
tion repair  depots,  oil  and  lubricating  branch,  ma- 
terial branch,  salvage,  motor  transport,  real  estate. 


244  Wings  of  War 

All  of  these  branches  had  an  endless  amount  of 
work  to  do  and  it  always  had  to  be  done  in  a  hurry. 
The  oil  and  lubricating  branch,  for  instance,  had 
to  conduct  the  development  of  suitable  lubricants 
for  aviation  engines,  arrange  for  the  planting  of 
one  hundred  thousand  acres  of  castor  beans  by 
1 8,000  farmers  provide  supplies  of  oils  for  the  home 
forces  and  the  A.  E.  F.,  look  after  gasoline  and 
many  other  things. 

One  of  its  triumphs  was  the  production  of  4 '  Lib- 
erty aero  oil"  without  which  the  Liberty  motor 
would  not  have  been  properly  lubricated. 

The  traffic  and  storage  branch  handled  about 
seventy-five  thousand  carloads  of  materials. 

The  Supply  Division  was  the  man  behind  the 
gun  for  the  aviator  from  the  day  he  began  his 
training  until  he  began  to  fight  in  France.  On  it 
he  depended  for  everything  he  used  and  consumed 
to  be  always  ready  and  exactly  right.  Its  un- 
known officers  and  obscure  men  worked  with  all  the 
ardor,  zeal,  and  self-sacrifice  of  the  more  fortunate 
fighters  whose  names  were  inscribed  on  the  roll  of 
fame.  There  are  records  of  mechanics  and  engi- 
neers working  four  days  and  nights  at  a  stretch  in 
the  shops  at  the  fields  in  order  to  keep  the  maxi- 
mum number  of  machines  and  student  aviators 
in  the  air  all  the  time. 


Partial  View  From  the  Air  of  the  Vast  American  Air  Service  Assembly 

Repair  and  Salvage  Shops  at  Romorantin,  France 

U.  S.  Air  Service  Photo 


CHAPTER  XXV 

NAVAL  AIRCRAFT  PRODUCTION 

WHILE  army  and  navy  aircraft  production  were 
coordinated  in  a  measure  by  the  Aircraft  Board 
and  by  direct  arrangements,  and  the  develop- 
ment and  production  of  engines  and  some  other 
apparatus  and  the  procurement  of  materials  were 
left  to  the  army  in  whole  or  in  part,  the  navy  main- 
tained throughout  the  war  its  own  independent 
aviation  sections  and  directed  development  and 
production  to  meet  its  own  ideas  and  its  peculiar 
needs.  Before  1916  the  navy  paid  as  much  at- 
tention to  aircraft  as  was  possible  with  the  limited 
appropriations  available.  The  first  appropriation 
for  Naval  Aviation  was  made  in  1916  and  during 
this  year  the  Navy  Department  developed  train- 
ing planes  and  training  facilities  in  addition  to 
adequate  research  and  experimental  facilities,  in- 
cluding the  largest  wind  tunnel  then  in  the  world. 
However,  in  1917  it  was  clear  that  Naval  Aviation 
should  concentrate  itself  upon  anti-submarine  op- 

245 


246  Wings  of  War 

erations  and  for  this  duty  large  patrol  seaplanes 
carrying  depth  charges  were  necessary.  Steps 
were  taken  promptly  to  obtain  models  for  such 
planes  by  development  from  existing  types,  but  it 
was  not  possible  to  fly  these  types  until  the  Liberty 
engine  became  available  in  the  early  autumn  of 
1917.  The  planes  were  ready  as  soon  as  the 
engines  were  developed.  The  trials  were  success- 
ful and  the  Navy  Department  entered  upon  a 
program  of  production  of  two  types  of  flying 
boats,  which  program  was  adhered  to.  The  un- 
certainty as  to  program  in  the  case  of  the  navy  did 
not  arise  so  much  from  a  vast  and  varied  foreign 
experience  as  from  the  fact  that  naval  aeronautics 
had  not  advanced  so  rapidly  during  the  European 
war  as  military  aeronautics,  and  the  field  was  more 
of  an  unknown  or  untried  one.  From  1912,  when 
aeronautical  experimentation  began  in  the  navy, 
to  1915,  inclusive,  only  $55,000  had  been  set  aside 
for  this  work.  In  1916,  Congress  appropriated 
$1,000,000  for  naval  aviation,  and  its  development 
in  any  important  way  dates  from  then.  At  the 
end  of  1916,  the  total  aircraft  deliveries  to  the 
navy  consisted  of  about  95  seaplanes  of  experi- 
mental and  training  types,  "mainly  prototypes  of 
the  Curtiss  N9  and  R6,  3  kite  balloons,  and  I  non- 
rigid  dirigible."  Thirty  Curtiss  N9's  were  de- 


Naval  Aircraft  Production     247 

livered  in  the  fall  of  1916,  and  early  in  the  spring 
of  1917  64  more  Ng's  and  76  R6's  were  ordered. 

Thanks  to  the  wise  forethought  of  Admiral 
Taylor,  chief  constructor,  the  entry  of  the  United 
States  into  the  war  was  preceded,  in  1916,  by  the 
ordering  of  a  small  number  of  machines  of  dif- 
ferent types  for  the  purpose  of  securing  data 
from  which  to  choose  the  most  suitable  ones  for 
future  training.  These  orders  were  placed  with 
the  Curtiss  Aeroplane  and  Motor  Corporation, 
the  Burgess  Company,  the  Sturtevant  Airplane 
Company,  the  Aeromarine  'Plane  and  Motor 
Corporation,  the  Thomas-Morse  Aircraft  Com- 
pany, the  Standard  Aircraft  Corporation,  the  Boe- 
ing Airplane  Company,  and  the  Gallaudet  Air- 
craft Corporation.  Following  these  experimental 
orders,  contracts  were  given  to  the  Burgess  Com- 
pany for  30  of  the  Curtiss  Ng's  (later  increased  to 
360),  to  the  Curtiss  Company  for  122  R6's,  later 
changed  to  Rg's,  and  to  their  respective  companies 
for  50  Boeings,  200  Aeromarines,  and  about  15 
Curtiss  F-boats,  sportsman's  type. 

The  problem  of  service  'planes,  owing  to  lack  of 
knowledge  of  requirements  and  developments,  was 
not  so  easily  disposed  of.  A  board  of  officers 
was  sent  abroad  in  September,  1917,  to  investi- 
gate, and  on  its  return,  reported  that  because 


248  Wings  of  War 

of  foreign  concentration  on  land  'planes  there 
was  no  satisfactory  type  of  seaplane  for  coast 
patrol  and  that  it  was  desirable  to  develop  Amer- 
ican types,  equipped  with  the  Liberty  motor. 
Acting  upon  this  information  and  knowing  that  it 
had  been  decided  to  establish  fifteen  coastal  air 
stations  abroad,  the  Joint  Army  and  Navy  Tech- 
nical Board  laid  down  a  program  that  was  accepted 
in  October,  1917.  That  it  took  six  months  before 
it  was  possible  to  determine  the  service  program 
is  both  a  commentary  on  our  unpreparedness 
and  an  explanation  that  disposes  of  accusations 
of  tardiness  of  action  when  the  emergency  arose. 
Neither  the  navy  nor  the  army  could  achieve 
the  impossible;  neither  could  act  intelligently  nor 
with  important  results  before  it  could  establish 
an  objective. 

The  program,  having  in  view  both  initial  re- 
quirements and  replacements  for  the  stations 
abroad  and  for  home  training  was : 

First:  Eleven  hundred  and  eighty-five  HS-l 
flying  boats  with  Liberty  engines. 

Second:  Two  hundred  and  thirty-five  H-l6 
flying  boats  with  Liberty  engines. 

Both  of  the  service  "boats"  decided  upon  were 
Curtiss  models. 

The  controlling  considerations  in  this  program 


Naval  Aircraft  Production     249 

were  the  fact  that  the  Liberty  engine  was  by  that 
time  fully  proved  and  a  desire  to  avoid  the  dangers 
of  highly  varied  types.  The  two  types  chosen  had 
been  demonstrated,  and  it  was  necessary  to  have 
two,  because  there  was  need  for  both  large  and 
small  machines,  especially  as  the  smaller  type 
could  be  built  more  rapidly  than  the  larger,  and 
shipping  difficulties  for  the  latter  were  anticipated. 
The  fighting  objective  of  both  types  was  the 
German  submarine,  and  for  that  purpose  the 
larger  kind  was  favored,  but  the  smaller  was  better 
than  none.  The  H-i6  was  the  larger  and  was  an 
improvement  on  the  H-I2  which  was  a  Curtiss 
design  adopted  by  the  British  navy,  the  Curtiss 
company  having  early  taken  the  lead  in  the  devel- 
opment of  flying  boats.  In  1918  the  H-i6  was 
succeeded  by  the  FsL  which  is  slightly  larger;  and 
the  HS-i  was  followed  by  the  HS2L. 

The  H-i6  is  described  as  a  tractor  biplane, 
carrying  two  Liberty  engines.  It  has  an  over-all 
length  of  46  feet  and  an  upper-wing  spread  of 
95  feet.  Stripped,  it  weighs  7400  pounds  and  with 
ordinary  equipment  10,900,  while  it  has  carried  a 
gross  weight  of  11,500  pounds.  Its  usual  crew  is 
four  men,  its  armament  five  Lewis  machine  guns 
and  two  23O-pound  bombs.  Its  cruising  limit  is 
nine  hours  light  or  six  hours  fully  loaded.  The 


250  Wings  of  War 


has  a  wing  spread  of  103.75  feet,  a  bare  weight 
of  8250  pounds,  a  permissible  load  of  13,000,  and 
has  actually  flown  with  13,600  pounds.  Its  arma- 
ment is  the  same  as  that  of  the  H-i6,  with  the  ex- 
ception that  it  carries  four  23O-pound  bombs  and  it 
has  a  cruising  limit  at  economical  speed  of  eleven 
hours,  and  with  geared  Liberty  engines  has  attained 
a  speed  of  100  miles  an  hour.  The  equipment  of 
both  these  boats  includes  radio  apparatus,  range 
lights,  signal  lamps,  intercommunicating  telephone 
sets,  food,  water,  and  a  medicine  chest. 

The  HSiL  is  about  a  third  smaller  in  dimen- 
sions than  the  FsL  and  is  a  single-engine  coast- 
patrol  machine,  the  engine  being  a  Liberty.  Its 
gross  weight  is  5900  pounds  and  its  armament  is 
one  machine  gun  and  two  i8o-pound  bombs. 

Contracts  for  these  machines  were  awarded  en- 
tirely to  existing  plants  except  that  in  order  to 
augment  the  volume  of  production  the  navy  erected 
a  large  plant  of  its  own  at  Philadelphia. 

This  program  seemed  large  when  adopted,  but 
two  months  later,  on  the  advice  of  Admiral  Sims, 
the  number  of  the  twin-engine  boats  was  increased 
to  864,  all  to  be  delivered  by  the  spring  of  1919. 
When  this  decision  was  made  it  was  found  that 
480  of  the  total  would  have  to  come  from  some  new 
source,  as  about  400  was  the  outside  capacity  of 


Hulls  of  F-5-L  Type  Seaplanes.     Curtis s  Elmwood  Plant,  Buffalo 

U.  S.  Air  Service  Photo 


Final  Assembly  of  Flying  Boats  at  Curtiss  Plant,  Elmwood,  Buffalo 
U.  S.  Air  Service  Photo 


Naval  Aircraft  Production     251 

the  plants  with  which  orders  had  already  been 
placed.  It  was  not  deemed  wise  to  place  complete 
orders  with  new  companies  and  on  the  other  hand 
the  prospect  of  building  and  organizing  a  govern- 
ment factory  of  adequate  size  was  dismaying  and 
of  doubtful  wisdom.  The  problem  was  handled  by 
building  an  immense  assembly  plant  as  an  exten- 
sion of  the  naval  aircraft  factory,  already  erected, 
and  having  the  various  parts  built  in  many  dif- 
ferent established  yacht-building,  metal,  and  wood- 
working plants  that  were  quite  capable  of  making 
the  parts  though  not  qualified  for  executing  the 
whole  job.  It  was  the  fabricated  ship  idea  of 
Hog  Island  applied  to  flying  boats. 

Quantity  production  of  the  service  boats  began 
in  April,  1918,  thus  running  parallel  with  army 
'plane  production,  with  six  HSL's  and  three  H-i6's 
a  week.  From  that  time  on  production  rapidly 
increased. 

In  June,  1918,  the  program  was  again  expanded, 
so  that  it  called  for  additions  of  700  FS'S,  300 
HS2's,  300  F-boats,  and  200  N9's — a  total  of  1800. 
Another  hundred  F-boats  were  added  in  Septem- 
ber. In  that  month  production  reached  its  height, 
twin  Liberty  engine  boats  coming  out  at  the  rate 
of  13  a  week,  and  single-engine  (mostly  Liberty) 
at  the  rate  of  38  a  week.  The  former  were  made 


252  Wings  of  War 

by  the  Naval  Aircraft  Factory,  Curtiss  Aeroplane 
and  Motor  Co.,  Buffalo,  Curtiss  Engineering  Cor- 
poration, Garden  City,  L.  I.,  N.  Y.,  and  the  Cana- 
dian Aeroplanes,  Ltd.,  Toronto,  Canada.  The 
latter  were  made  by  the  Gallaudet  Aircraft  Cor- 
poration, East  Greenwich,  R.  L,  the  LWF  En- 
gineering Co.,  College  Point,  N.  Y.,  Curtiss  Aero- 
plane and  Motor  Co.,  Buffalo,  Standard  Aircraft 
Corporation,  Elizabeth,  N.  J.,  and  the  Boeing  Air- 
plane Company,  Seattle,  Wash.  In  the  same 
month,  training  machines  were  being  delivered  at 
the  rate  of  22  a  week  by  the  Burgess  Company, 
the  Aeromarine  Company,  and  the  Curtiss  Engi- 
neering Corporation. 

Before  the  armistice  was  signed,  it  was  realized 
that  naval  aircraft  were  being  manufactured  far 
more  rapidly  than  they  could  be  utilized  either  at 
home  or  abroad,  and  early  in  November  the  pro- 
gram was  curtailed  by  canceling  550  FS'S,  248 
HS2's,  and  300  training  machines.  After  the 
signing  of  the  armistice,  there  was  a  further  can- 
cellation of  145  HS2's,  512  FS'S,  and  100  school 
machines. 

Several  new  types  of  'planes  were  developed  by 
or  for  the  navy  during  1918,  with  a  view  to  meet- 
ing the  progress  of  naval  aeronautics.  The  Aero- 
marine  company  developed  the  Model  40  Flying 


Captain  K.  G.  Pulliam,  Jr.,  and  His  is-Meter,  Decorated  Nieuport  Plane, 

"The  Jazbo" 


American-Made  Handley-Page  Bomber  with  Single-Seater  at  Left 


Naval  Aircraft  Production     253 

Boat  and  the  Curtiss  Engineering  Corporation  the 
Model  MF  Flying  Boat  for  training  purposes,  and 
both  were  adopted  by  the  navy.  Several  different 
service  machines  were  designed,  built,  and  tried, 
the  most  conspicuous  being  the  NC-i,  the  Curtiss 
model  i8-T  or  Kirkham  fighter,  the  N-i  or  Davis 
gun  carrier,  and  the  HA  or  Liberty  fighter. 

The  NC-i  was  built  by  the  Curtiss  Engineering 
Corporation,  under  the  direction  of  officers  of  the 
Bureau  of  Construction  and  Repair.  It  is  a  bi- 
plane with  an  upper- wing  spread  of  126  feet,  and 
an  over-all  length  of  a  trifle  more  than  68  feet.  Its 
weight  with  full  load  was  22,000  pounds;  stripped, 
it  weighed  13,200  pounds.  It  was  driven  by  three 
Liberty  motors  and  had  a  hull  of  unique  design, 
which  rather  resembled  a  large  pontoon.  This 
machine  made  a  flight  at  Rockaway  Beach,  L. 
I.,  on  November  27,  1918,  with  51  persons  on 
board,  thereby  establishing  the  world's  record  for 
airplane  passenger  carrying.  Later  four  engines 
were  installed  in  the  NC-i,  three  tractor  and  one 
pusher.  Due  to  this  change  the  light  weight  be- 
came 16,000  Ibs.,  and  the  total  weight  28,000  Ibs. 
The  NC-i  was  followed  by  three  other  NC's  of  like 
type,  and  it  was  the  NC-4  that  won  the  high  dis- 
tinction of  being  the  first  aircraft  to  leap  the 
Atlantic. 


254  Wings  of  War 

The  Curtiss  i8-T  is  a  two-place  tri-plane  land 
machine,  designed  as  a  guard  for  the  heavy  naval 
bombing  machines  along  the  French  coast.  It  is 
driven  by  a  Curtiss  K-I2  engine  and  has  a  speed 
of  162  miles  an  hour,  which  makes  it  the  fastest 
'plane  ever  built  up  to  this  time. 

The  N-i  was  designed  to  carry  a  Davis  Q-pound- 
er  non-recoil  gun,  and  is  of  the  pusher  type — that 
is,  has  the  propeller  behind  instead  of  in  front,  as 
is  the  arrangement  with  the  ordinary  or  tractor 
type,  in  order  to  put  the  gun  at  the  nose.  As  it 
was  afterwards  found  possible  to  mount  the  Davis 
gun  on  the  HS-2  flying  boat,  less  attention  has  been 
paid  to  the  N-i  than  it  would  have  had  otherwise. 

The  Liberty  fighter  is  a  single  pontoon  seaplane, 
designed  to  meet  enemy  aircraft.  It  is  a  two-seater 
and  carries  four  machine  guns  and  has  attained 
the  remarkable  speed,  for  a  seaplane,  of  127  miles 
an  hour. 

One  dirigible  balloon  was  built  for  the  navy  in 
1916  by  the  Connecticut  Aircraft  Company,  and 
that  was  about  the  extent  of  the  navy's  equipment 
with  the  buoyant  aircraft  when  we  entered  the 
war.  In  the  January  before  the  war  was  declared 
a  single-engine,  tractor,  training  dirigible  of 
80,000  feet  capacity  was  designed  by  the  Bur- 
eau of  Construction  and  Repair,  and  in  March 


Naval  Aircraft  Production     255 

orders  were  placed  for  16,  the  contracts  for  the 
envelopes  being  taken  by  the  Goodyear  Tire  & 
Rubber  Company,  the  B.  F.  Goodrich  Company 
of  Akron,  the  United  States  Rubber  Company  of 
Akron,  Ohio,  and  the  Connecticut  Aircraft  Company. 
The  obstacles  in  the  way  of  rapid  progress  at  first 
have  been  set  forth  elsewhere,  but  in  general  they 
were  those  of  a  new  industry  which  must  be  de- 
veloped in  an  industrial  hothouse.  The  first  vessel 
of  this  type  was  tested  in  July,  1917,  and  the  rest 
were  delivered  by  the  spring  of  1918.  Their  suc- 
cess in  coast  patrol  work  was  such  that  it  was  de- 
cided in  the  spring  of  1918  to  build  10  twin-engine 
dirigibles  of  175,000  cubic  feet  capacity,  this  num- 
ber being  later  increased  to  30.  These  airships 
were  known  as  the  "  C  "  class  and  designed  by  the 
Bureau  of  Construction  and  Repair.  The  first  of 
these  larger  vessels  was  ready  in  October  but  the 
armistice  came  before  the  others  were  done,  and 
it  was  decided  to  reduce  the  number  to  be  com- 
pleted to  15. 

The  kite  balloon  program  provided  for  600  bal- 
loons, and  50  of  the  Caquot  M  type  were  delivered 
in  the  first  part  of  1918.  Later  the  Caquot  R 
type  was  taken  up  and  finally  an  improved  M 
type.  With  the  coming  of  peace  the  balloon  pro- 
gram was  reduced  one  half. 


256  Wings  of  War 

In  connection  with  the  use  of  balloons  the  navy 
had  much  the  same  problems  as  the  army  with 
special  variations  to  meet  nautical  conditions. 
Some  of  these  problems  were  solved  with  the  army 
and  some  separately.  The  development  of  winches 
and  cables  for  handling  the  balloons  from  vessels 
were  serious  and  difficult  matters.  The  N.  C.  L. 
Engineering  Corporation  of  Providence,  R.  I.,  de- 
veloped the  gasoline  engine  winch  or  windlass 
along  the  "surge"  type,  following  foreign  practice, 
which  avoids  a  compression  of  the  cable  by  winding 
it  in  a  single  layer  in  grooves  on  one  or  more  drums, 
which  take  all  the  pull,  the  stored  part  of  the  cable 
being  wound  around  other  drums  under  slight 
tension.  The  Lidgerwood  Company  of  New  York 
modified  its  cargo  vessel  steam  winch  for  balloon 
handling  and  towing  in  an  ingenious  manner,  but 
it  was  finally  found  that  this  class  of  winches  was 
not  adapted  to  handling  balloons  at  great  heights, 
especially  when  the  telephone  cables  were  inside 
the  holding  cables,  owing  to  the  crushing  com- 
pression. Seventy-five  of  the  NCL  gasoline 
winches  were  ordered  and  quantity  production 
was  attained  in  the  spring  of  1918.  Another  vari- 
ation of  the  winches  was  the  use  of  steam  power 
with  the  "surge"  drum;  and  still  another,  the 
"surge"  drum  with  electrical  power;  the  latter 


Naval  Aircraft  Production     257 

being  specially  adapted  to  capital  ships.  The  man- 
ufacture of  the  balloon  cable  and  its  problems  have 
been  mentioned  elsewhere,  they  being  problems 
common  to  the  army  and  navy. 

The  navy  shared  the  dope  and  fabric  tasks  and 
problems  with  the  army,  but  in  a  large  measure 
faced  and  solved  its  own  spruce  problem.  At  first 
it  had  intended  to  rely  on  the  army  for  all  its 
spruce,  as  the  latter  had  found  it  necessary  to  make 
arrangements  on  a  mammoth  scale  for  the  pro- 
curement of  the  fine  Sitka  spruce  of  the  north- 
western Pacific  States.  The  troubles  the  army 
encountered,  owing  to  labor  and  other  obstacles 
that  presented  themselves,  prompted  the  navy  to 
consider  other  sources,  the  chief  of  which  turned 
out  to  be  the  New  England  spruce  forests,  and  it 
was  agreed  that  the  cultivation  of  this  field  of 
supply  should  be  left  to  the  navy.  By  May,  1918, 
about  seventy  mills  were  turning  out  New  England 
white  spruce  at  the  rate  of  a  million  feet  a  month, 
by  which  time  the  northwestern  supply  was  so 
abundant  that  the  navy  had  more  lumber  than  it 
needed.  Some  of  the  surplus  stock  was  sold  to 
the  British  Government.  In  July,  however,  the 
army  began  to  run  short  of  spruce  for  struts  and 
the  navy  surplus  proved  to  be  very  opportune  for 
some  plants.  There  was  much  disfavor  for  New 


258  Wings  of  War 

England  spruce  because  of  its  small  pin-knots  and 
short  lengths,  but  necessity  enforced  its  use  and 
specifications  were  altered  to  meet  its  requirements. 
Later  when  waterproof  glue  and  laminated  con- 
struction were  developed,  it  came  into  considerable 
favor  and  there  was  a  steady  preferential  demand 
for  a  considerable  quantity  of  it.  The  navy  supple- 
mented its  New  England  supply  with  small  quanti- 
ties of  Sitka  spruce  from  sources  overlooked  by  the 
army,  which  were  shipped  east  by  the  Canadian 
Pacific  railway  and  sold  to  the  New  England  lum- 
ber mills  having  navy  spruce  contracts. 

The  rapid  erection  and  prompt  operation  of  the 
government  naval  aircraft  factory  is  worthy  of 
special  notice.  The  reasons  which  prompted  the 
decision  to  erect  such  a  plant  have  already  been 
noted.  On  August  6,  1917,  a  contract  was  let  for 
a  plant  that  would  have  a  capacity  of  1000  train- 
ing seaplanes  a  year.  The  factory  proper  was  400 
feet  by  400  of  permanent  construction  and  there 
were  some  auxiliary  buildings.  Work  on  the  first 
boat  in  this  plant  began  on  October  I2th  and  the 
building  was  entirely  completed  on  November 
28th.  When  it  was  decided  to  meet  the  require- 
ments of  the  greatly  enlarged  program  adopted  in 
December,  1917,  by  having  the  parts  of  the  sea- 
planes made  elsewhere  and  assembled  at  the  naval 


Naval  Aircraft  Production     259 

factory,  two  other  great  buildings,  350'  x  400'  and 
680'  x  200',  besides  large  auxiliary  buildings  had  to 
be  erected.  This  great  assembly  plant  was  fed 
with  seaplane  parts  by  the  Victor  Talking  Machine 
Company,  which  had  almost  abandoned  its  ordi- 
nary work  to  turn  its  workers  and  equipment 
to  the  government's  work,  seven  yacht  yards, 
two  small  aircraft  factories,  by  a  number  of  furni- 
ture factories  and  automobile  body  and  sheet 
metal  products  factories.  Over  7000  persons  were 
employed  on  the  naval  work  in  these  private  plants, 
in  addition  to  3643  in  the  naval  aircraft  factory, 
itself.  The  groups  of  cooperating  factories  were 
managed  as  parts  of  the  naval  factory  that 
happened  to  be  long  distances  away,  instead  of 
right  alongside  the  executive  offices ;  thus  welding 
the  whole  enterprise  into  a  single  unit.  The  as- 
sembling and  training  of  the  workers  was  a  great 
problem  in  itself,  not  more  than  25  of  the  3700 
in  the  central  plant  ever  having  had  previous 
experience  in  aircraft-making.  The  objective  of 
the  factory  and  assembling  plant  was  the  making 
of  830  twin-engine  "boats,"  and  the  necessary 
spares,  which  would  cost  $23,000,000.  On  De- 
cember 31,  1918,  the  production  amounted  to  183 
of  these  vessels,  50  sets  of  spare  parts,  and  4 
experimental  machines;  not  to  mention  experi- 


260  Wings  of  War 

mental  work,  individual  fittings,  and  parts  for 
service  machines. 

It  is  noteworthy  that  in  these  naval  records  and 
accounts  of  army  production  of  aircraft  and  acces- 
sories it  is  found  that  quantity  production  is  rarely 
mentioned  before  the  early  spring  of  1918.  From 
this,  as  well  as  from  the  like  experiences  of  other 
production  for  war  purposes,  it  is  fair  to  generalize 
that  it  took  the  United  States  one  year  to  mobilize 
industrially — and,  all  things  considered,  that  was  a 
wonderful  achievement.  That  is  to  say,  in  a  gen- 
eral way,  that  a  year  elapsed  from  the  declaration 
of  war  until  the  manufacturing  resources  of  the 
United  States  began  to  be  felt  in  the  special  ma- 
chinery of  war,  except  in  the  cases  of  those  indus- 
tries and  plants  that  had  already  been  mobilized 
to  meet  the  demands  of  the  European  nations,  pre- 
vious to  our  entry  into  the  war.  It  also  took  about 
a  year  to  get  ready  to  send  troops  to  Europe  in 
large  numbers.  These  facts  may  well  cause  serious 
reflection  as  to  what  would  have  happened  to 
us  had  the  war  been  solely  between  the  United 
States  and  Germany.  We  had  a  year  to  get  ready 
this  time,  after  war  was  declared.  Even  then,  it 
would  have  been  a  year  more  before  we  were  ready 
to  exert  the  full  strength  that  our  industrial  devel- 
opment represented. 


Partial  View  of  the  Great  A.  E.  F.  Air  Service  Training  School  at  Issoudun, 

France 

U.  S.  Air  Service  Photo 


Tuning  up  a  Spad  in  a  Field  Hangar  at  the  Front 

U.  S.  Air  Service  Photo 


CHAPTER  XXVI 
"LYNCHING  THE  AIRCRAFTERS" 

No  branch  of  the  American  war  production 
effort  has  been  subjected  to  so  much  persistent, 
widespread  and  relentless  criticism  as  that  of  air- 
craft production,  although  the  fact  is  that  the 
production  of  aircraft  and  all  of  its  accessories  is 
really  one  of  the  most  wonderful  achievements  of 
the  war  and  it  abounds  with  records  of  great  tasks 
greatly  done.  Why  then,  it  may  be  asked,  was  it 
singled  out  for  such  a  flood  of  persistent  and,  often, 
virulent  criticism?  The  answer  is  fourfold. 

First,  aircraft  design  and  production  were  so 
comparatively  new  in  this  country  that  there  was 
room  for  wide  divergence  of  opinion  and  judgment 
as  to  the  best  course  to  follow  in  regard  to  many 
features  of  the  undertaking  and  ample  opportunity 
for  anyone  to  set  himself  up  as  authority. 

Second,  publicity  that  was  flamboyant  and  exag- 
gerated on  the  one  hand  and  insufficient  on  the 
other  hand. 

261 


262  Wings  of  War 

Third,  underestimates  by  the  aircraft  managers 
and  the  manufacturers  of  the  time  it  would  take  to 
get  American  aircraft  plants  of  all  sorts  into  large 
production. 

Fourth,  lack  of  a  thoroughly  coordinated  and 
efficiently  functioning  organization  of  the  air  serv- 
ice as  a  whole. 

The  first  answer  requires  no  elaboration  here  as 
it  is  really  dealt  with  throughout  this  work. 

The  mistakes  of  publicity  arose  partly  from  over- 
confidence  and  partly  from  the  fact  that  so  little 
of  a  definite  nature  could  be  given  out,  under  the 
regulations  of  military  secrecy,  that  generalities 
had  to  be  resorted  to,  and  the  rest  left  to  the  imag- 
ination of  the  eager  writers  who  were  fascinated 
by  the  magnitude  of  the  American  air  effort  and  the 
results  that  would  follow  if  it  were  realized.  On 
the  other  hand,  looking  back  now  it  would  appear 
that  much  of  the  data  regarding  the  procurement 
of  materials  and  the  production  of  'planes,  engines, 
and  the  numerous  accessories  might  well  have  been 
given  to  the  public  and  thus  familiarized  it  with 
the  enormous  difficulties  the  aircraft  managers 
faced.  The  result  of  the  ill-advised  publicity  was 
to  raise  false  hopes  of  early  achievement  on  a  scale 
of  great  magnitude  while  not  informing  the  people 
of  the  extent  and  variety  of  what  was  actually 


"  Lynching  the  Aircrafters  "    263 

being  done,  with  a  correspondingly  great  disap- 
pointment when  it  was  learned  that  those  hopes 
were  not  to  be  realized,  though  the  actual  achieve- 
ment was  of  surpassing  brilliance  and  solidity. 

While  the  faulty  publicity  was  only  partly  the 
error  of  the  aircraft  organization,  it  must  be 
charged  with  responsibility  for  underestimates  of 
the  periods  of  production.  For  reasons  which  have 
been  made  plain  elsewhere  the  aircraft  managers 
erred  in  this  respect,  partly  because  of  an  abiding 
optimism,  which  was  essential  to  the  successful 
prosecution  of  their  work,  and  partly  because  they 
allowed  themselves  to  be  deceived  by  the  sanguine 
time-estimates  of  manufacturers. 

Now  that  the  situation  is  better  understood, 
that  the  public  is  beginning  to  understand  that  the 
aircraft  producers  did  a  great  work  greatly,  and 
time  has  confirmed  their  judgment  and  their  con- 
fidence in  the  ability  of  American  manufacturers 
successfully  to  apply  quantity  production  methods 
to  aircraft-making,  there  is  little  need  to  dwell  at 
length  on  the  bitter  criticisms  of  the  aircraft  mana- 
gers and  producers.  Neither  is  more  than  a  pass- 
ing reference  required  to  the  various  investigations 
which  followed  each  other  throughout  the  war  and 
culminated  in  the  Senate  Military  Affairs  Commit- 
tee investigation  and  the  executive  investigation 


264  Wings  of  War 

conducted  by  Chas.  E.  Hughes  in  association  with 
the  Department  of  Justice.  The  passage  of  time, 
the  record  of  the  facts,  the  full  and  accurate  pub- 
licity that  the  termination  of  the  war  has  made 
possible,  and  the  realization  that  these  investiga- 
tions could  not  have  the  impartiality  resulting  from 
the  personal  detachment  which  only  a  lapse  of 
time  makes  possible,  have  made  them  largely 
unimportant.  At  the  time  they  loomed  large  and 
threatened  to  discredit  permanently  a  vast  field 
of  American  war  effort  and  all  who  were  associated 
with  it,  and  most  certainly  had  the  effect,  along 
with  some  good,  of  cruelly  harassing  and  seriously 
retarding  progress. 

The  defective  organization  was  inherent  in  the 
American  military  system  and  was  largely  the 
inevitable  result  of  leaving  in  a  minor  place  a 
department  of  military  preparation  that  was  soon 
to  surpass  in  magnitude  and  complexity  the  most 
extravagant  of  pre-war  forecasts,  and  trying  to 
supplement  it  with  a  largely  impotent  but  com- 
plication-adding Aircraft  Board.  Time  pressed  so 
urgently  that  there  was  no  leisure  to  conceive  or 
perfect  an  adequate  organization  at  first.  The 
aircraft  production  managers  had  all  they  could  do 
in  the  stress  of  preparation  for  production  on  an 
enormous  scale  without  diverting  thought  and  en- 


"  Lynching  the  Aircraf ters  "     265 

ergy  to  a  campaign  for  the  attainment  of  a  proper 
place  and  system  for  the  air  service  as  a  whole  in 
the  government's  organization  for  war,  much  as 
they  realized  the  need  of  a  different  scheme. 

One  good  result  of  criticism  and  investigations 
was  a  shifting  of  the  place  of  the  air  service  in  the 
general  military  scheme  and  of  a  simplification  of 
the  internal  organization.  Changes  in  the  latter 
became  necessary  to  restore  public  confidence,  and 
also  to  restore  the  morale  of  the  organization 
which  had  suffered  so  much  from  criticism.  Thus 
it  came  about  that  eventually,  some  months  before 
the  termination  of  the  war,  the  whole  air  service 
was  withdrawn  from  the  Signal  Corps,  and  placed 
under  John  D.  Ryan  as  Assistant  Secretary  of 
War,  and  under  him  was  the  Bureau  of  Aircraft 
Production  on  the  one  hand  and  the  Division  of 
Military  Aeronautics  on  the  other  hand.  Major 
General  W.  L.  Kenly  was  placed  in  charge  of 
military  aeronautics  which  had  to  do  with  the 
fighting  air  service  and  W.  C.  Potter,  who  was 
Colonel  Deed's  chief  of  the  equipment  division  of 
the  Signal  Corps,  was  made  chief  of  production. 
At  the  same  time  all  matters  relating  to  aircraft 
were  divorced  from  the  Signal  Corps.  In  this 
manner  the  air  service  attained  an  independence 
and  degree  of  authority  that  it  had  not  hitherto 


266  Wings  of  War 

enjoyed.  Mr.  Ryan  inspired  great  respect  and 
confidence,  and  supplied  a  centralized  headship 
that  had  not  been  possible  under  the  old  system. 
He  found,  however,  that  the  production  or  equip- 
ment work  was  well  organized  and  efficient,  and 
so  far  as  it  was  concerned  it  continued  about 
as  it  was  under  a  different  name  and  authority. 
Mr.  Ryan  has  frequently  stated  that  he  came 
into  the  organization  too  late  to  be  credited  with 
the  results  achieved  in  creation  and  production. 
He  modestly  claims  for  himself  merely  the  filling 
of  a  harmonizing  function,  which  the  progress  of 
events  had  made  necessary. 

In  a  public  address  in  New  York  City  not  long 
since,  Mr.  Ryan  said : 

"Mr.  Toastmaster,  ladies  and  gentlemen,  public 
speaking  is  not  in  my  line,  but  I-  would  be  a  poor 
sort  of  a  fellow  if  I  couldn't  say  a  word  to  you  men 
assembled  here  to-night,  I  would  be  a  poor  fellow 
if  I  couldn't  say — in  appreciation  of  what  you  have 
done  for  the  country,  and  done  for  the  Cause,  that 
we  have  won  so  gloriously,  done  for  me  in  the 
short  time  that  I  had  to  do  with  aircraft  produc- 
tion— that  probably  no  one  has  come  out  of  the 
war  with  as  much  credit  for  what  somebody  else 
did  as  I  have. 

"I   was  called  into  aircraft  production  at  a 


"Lynching  the  Aircrafters"    267 

time,  as  Mr.  Marshall  says,  when  there  was  a 
great  deal  of  discussion,  a  great  deal  of  criticism, 
and  a  great  deal  of  blame,  and  I  say  to  you 
to-night  in  all  earnestness,  most  of  it  was  totally 
and  entirely  undeserved. 

"Aircraft  production  had  to  start  at  the  begin- 
ning. It  had  to  find  a  way  from  nothing,  to  meet 
the  demands  of  the  American  people,  and  be  brought 
to  a  point  that  was  beyond  all  reason.  People 
talked  of  clouds  of  airplanes,  of  tens  of  thousands  of 
sparrows,  and  it  was  just  as  impossible  to  realize 
that  dream  as  it  was  to  realize  any  kind  of  a  dream. 
Aircraft  had  to  be  built  slowly,  carefully,  they  had 
to  be  built  to  conserve,  first,  the  lives  of  these  gal- 
lant boys  who  took  these  ships  in  the  air.  They  had 
to  be" made  sure,  every  wrinkle,  every  crinkle,  every 
thing  that  could  be  a  menace  to  the  life  of  these 
boys  had  to  be  taken  out  of  them,  if  it  was  pos- 
sible, before  they  were  sent  to  fight  across  the  line, 
and  they  had  to  fight  across  the  line. 

"The  work  that  was  done  before  me  made  it 
comparatively  easy  for  me  to  win  a  good  deal  of 
praise,  as  I  say,  that  I  was  not  entitled  to.  The 
work  of  my  predecessors,  the  work  of  the  aircraft 
manufacturers  of  the  United  States  was  a  thing 
that,  when  I  got  into  it  and  studied  it,  was  amazing 
to  me  in  its  competency,  and  all  it  lacked  was  just 


268  Wings  of  War 

time  enough  and  just  some  organization  to  center 
it,  to  drive  it  in  the  direction,  and  to  finish  it. 

"The  manufacturers  of  this  country,  with  singu- 
lar devotion  to  the  country,  with  great  patriotism, 
and  with  the  greatest  earnestness  that  I  have  ever 
seen  in  any  body  of  men,  had  built  an  organization 
for  the  manufacture  of  aircraft  that  certainly  has 
never  been  equalled  in  the  world,  in  the  time  in 
which  it  has  been  done. 

"The  brains  that  were  in  the  aircraft  organiza- 
tion at  the  time  that  I  took  charge  of  it  had  been 
well-directed.  There  were  some  things  that  might 
have  been  better  done.  There  are  things  always 
that  might  have  been  better  done,  but  in  the  main, 
in  the  mass,  the  work  was  well  laid  down,  it  was 
under  way,  and  the  manufacturers  of  this  country 
who  were  making  aircraft  were  doing  a  wonderful 
job,  as  far  back  as  last  May. 

"The  greatest  effort  necessary  to  build  aircraft, 
as  you  gentlemen  know,  to  start  the  building  of 
aircraft,  was  in  the  building  of  the  engines,  and  is 
there  anybody  here  to-night  who  doubts  that  the 
accomplishment  of  the  American  manufacturers  of 
engines  was  one  of  the  greatest  accomplishments 
in  the  war,  one  of  the  greatest  things  done  in  the 
war?  When  the  war  ended  there  wasn't  a  nation 
on  our  side  of  the  war — and  I  am  sure  there  wasn't 


"  Lynching  the  Aircraf ters  "    269 

one  on  the  other — who  would  not  take  every  en- 
gine we  could  build  for  them  of  the  types  we  were 
building,  there  was  not  a  single  nation  in  the  war 
that  did  not  want  more  of  what  we  were  making 
than  we  could  build  for  them. 

"And  we  did  not  do  so  badly.  From  the  time 
we  began,  we  built  more  engines,  and  we  built  more 
'planes,  month  for  month,  from  the  time  we  began, 
than  any  nation  in  the  war  built  from  the  time  it 
began.  We  had  more  engines  ready,  and  we  had 
more  'planes  ready,  month  by  month,  from  the 
time  we  commenced,  than  any  nation  in  the  war 
had  month  by  month  from  the  time  it  commenced. 

"But  the  American  manufacturers  of  aircraft, 
the  American  engineers,  with  their  ingenuity,  their 
brains,  their  patriotic  devotion,  the  tremendous 
work  they  put  into  it,  were  building  so  well  and 
even  so  fast  that  the  day  the  armistice  was  declared 
there  were  686  American  'planes  at  the  port  of 
embarkation  that  could  not  be  loaded.  That  was 
not  the  fault  of  the  shipbuilders.  Mr.  Marshall 
gave  us  more  credit  than  we  were  entitled  to.  But 
the  reason  for  it  was  that  while  we  were  building 
a  good  many  'planes,  a  great  many  other  people 
were  building  other  things  that  General  Pershing 
and  the  people  on  the  other  side  wanted  very 
badly,  and  they  were  taking  trucks  and  ordnance 


270  Wings  of  War 

and  other  things  that  they  needed  very  badly,  and 
leaving  aeroplanes  for  the  last  few  days,  but  the 
fact  remains  and  we  have  it  to  our  credit  that  we 
had  more  'planes  ready  for  them  than  they  were 
ready  to  take.  It  was  a  great  adventure,  and  we 
are  all  proud  of  it." 

Since  the  signing  of  the  armistice  the  Aircraft 
Board  has  been  abolished  and  the  air  service  has 
been  reorganized  again  with  Maj.  Gen.  Chas.  T. 
Menoher,  who  commanded  the  42d  Division  in 
France,  as  Director  of  the  Air  Service,  which  is 
divided  into  four  groups,  namely,  Supply,  Infor- 
mation, Training  and  Operations,  and  Adminis- 
trative. The  group  of  Training  and  Operations 
really  succeeds  the  division  of  Military  Aero- 
nautics of  the  Ryan  regime;  Brig.  Gen.  Wm. 
Mitchell  therein  succeeds  Gen.  Kenly.  Col.  W.  E. 
Gillmore  is  at  the  head  of  Supply  group,  which 
takes  the  place  of  the  Bureau  of  Aircraft  Produc- 
tion; Maj.  H.  M.  Hickam  at  the  head  of  Informa- 
tion and  Col.  W.  F.  Pierson  at  the  head  of  the 
Administrative  staff.  Gen.  Menoher's  executive 
officer  relating  him  to  the  rest  of  the  organization 
is  Col.  M.  F.  Davis  and  there  is  also  an  advisory 
board  made  up  of  Col.  W.  S.  Kilner,  Col.  A.  L. 
Fuller,  Col.  H.  C.  Pratt,  Lt.  Col.  G.  B.  Hunter, 
Lt.  Col.  B.  Q.  Jones,  and  Major  C.  R.  Cameron. 


"Lynching  the  Aircrafters"    271 

In  the  end,  the  men  of  the  equipment  division 
of  the  Signal  Corps  who  were  so  aspersed  and  even 
humiliated  were  fully  vindicated  officially.  They 
needed  no  vindication  in  American  business  and 
manufacturing  circles.  As  the  public  gets  the 
right  perspective  and  a  proper  understanding  of 
the  multitude  of  almost  insuperable  difficulties 
under  which  they  tirelessly,  patriotically,  and 
thanklessly  struggled,  it  too  will  accord  honor 
where  it  was  wont  to  give  censure. 


CHAPTER  XXVII 

REVIEW  AND  PROSPECT 

Now  that  it  is  possible  to  survey  the  whole  field 
of  America's  industrial  production  for  war  pur- 
poses it  is  plain  that  the  country  did  much  better 
than  it  seemed  to  be  doing  during  the  war  when 
the  emergency  was  so  pressing,  celerity  so  vital, 
and  each  mistake,  or  delay,  or  error  of  judgment 
loomed  so  large.  In  consequence  of  the  basic 
national  fault  of  not  preparing  for  what  was  com- 
ing, it  was  necessary  to  try  to  do  everything  in  an 
incredibly  short  period  of  time.  There  was  little 
time  for  deliberation.  Plans  and  their  realization 
had  to  be  almost  simultaneous.  Often  realiza- 
tion was  far  advanced  before  the  plan  was  revealed 
to  be  faulty.  Marshal  Foch's  admonition,  "Do 
not  delay  half  a  minute!"  rang  in  everyone's  ears. 
Almost  everyone  who  was  in  touch  with  the  vast 
effort  for  production  was  aware  of  confusion,  per- 
sonal incompetence,  ill-advised  courses,  and  the 
dilatoriness  of  official  routine.  The  accumulation 

272 


Review  and  Prospect         273 

of  this  discouraging  personal  experience  resulted  in 
a  widespread  pessimism  which  tended  to  obscure 
the  fact  that  whether  by  muddling  or  by  clear- 
headedness, thanks  to  a  prodigious  output  of  en- 
ergy, the  great  enterprise  was  moving  ahead  all  the 
time  with  increasing  momentum. 

Assistant  Secretary  of  War  Benedict  Crowell  has 
recently  published  a  voluminous  report  on  the 
production  of  munitions  during  the  war,  which 
though  it  does  not  have  the  value  of  an  impartial 
review  does  enable  one  to  get  an  adequate  impres- 
sion of  the  colossal  extent  of  the  munitions  work 
and  compare  relative  degrees  of  success  and  prog- 
ress of  the  different  departments  of  the  effort.  It 
shows  clearly  that  aircraft  production  was  at  least 
as  well  and  as  swiftly  done  as  the  other  parts  of 
the  mountainous  job.  Reviewing  what  was  accom- 
plished, some  of  the  outstanding  features  might  be 
mentioned  as  follows: 

Prompt  provision  of  training  fields,  quarters, 
general  equipment,  schools,  and  supplies  for 
190,000  men. 

Rapid  procurement  of  training  'planes  and  en- 
gines on  the  requisite  scale,  1406  'planes  and 
1905  engines  being  produced  in  1917,  production 
beginning  as  early  as  June  on  the  'planes  and  in 
July  on  the  engines ;  that  is  to  say  within  two  or 

18 


274  Wings  of  War 

three  months  after  the  declaration  of  war;  and 
being  adequate  for  the  training  requirements  of  a 
force  of  190,000  men  within  a  year.  The  total  of 
training  'planes  for  the  first  year  of  the  war — with 
only  nine  months  of  real  production — was  3428. 
This  compares  favorably  with  the  total  British  pro- 
duction of  2040  for  the  calendar  year  1915,  after 
giving  the  British  producers  a  starting  period  from 
August  i  to  December  31,1914.  Our  engine  produc- 
tion for  the  same  period  was  probably  25  per  cent, 
greater  than  the  corresponding  British  production. 
The  designing  and  production  of  the  Liberty  en- 
gine is  now  conceded  on  all  sides  to  have  been  a 
brilliant  and  praiseworthy  effort.  It  is  now  per- 
ceived that  taking  all  things  into  consideration,  to 
design  and  manufacture  such  a  nice,  complex,  and 
powerful  mechanism,  far  in  advance  of  continental 
development  with  respect  to  amount  of  power, 
within  one  year  was  an  extraordinary  achievement. 
The  best  promise  for  a  transplanted  foreign  engine 
was  500  machines  in  that  period,  whereas  there 
were  actually  produced  noo  Liberties.  The  de- 
cision to  produce  the  Liberty  engine,  widely  crit- 
icized at  the  time,  as  a  fundamental  mistake, 
turned  out  to  be  one  of  the  most  judicious  decisions 
of  the  war.  It  put  us  aerially  on  the  battle  line 
with  American  equipment. 


Review  and  Prospect         275 

The  production  of  battle  'planes,  pivoted  on  en- 
gineering and  military  advice  and  judgment,  and 
was  slower  in  getting  under  way  than  that  of  train- 
ing 'planes  and  engines  and  the  Liberty  motor,  but 
when  the  gates  of  production  were  opened  progress 
was  exceedingly  rapid,  and  the  rate  of  output  of 
them  was  near  20,000  a  year  when  hostilities 
ceased,  which  again  compares  very  favorably  with 
a  total  British  production  of  14,400  in  the  third 
year  of  the  British  effort.  Our  actual  home  pro- 
duction of  'planes  of  all  kinds  during  ten  months 
of  1918  was  1 1,815,  and  had  the  armistice  not  been 
signed  in  that  year,  would  have  been  15,000. 

The  progress  made  in  balloon  production  was 
more  than  satisfactory. 

The  record  of  the  designing  and  manufacturing 
of  all  the  accessories  for  airplanes  and  balloons  is 
one  of  the  brightest  chapters  in  American  indus- 
trial history. 

The  discovery  of  economical  methods  of  pro- 
ducing helium  gas  was  a  brilliant  and  momentous 
feat,  which  will  have  a  profound  effect  on  the 
future  of  lighter-than-air  craft. 

The  adaptation  of  cotton  fabric  to  airplane  wing- 
covers  was  a  lifeline  for  the  Allies  as  well  as  for 
ourselves. 

The  production  of  spruce  in  sufficient  quantity 


276  Wings  of  War 

to  keep  going  all  the  French,  British,  and  Italian 
aircraft  factories,  as  well  as  our  own,  was  a 
marvelous  feat. 

The  production  of  dope  was  similarly  important 
and  meritorious. 

The  ample  provision  of  machine  guns  of  both 
the  fixed  and  flexible  type  for  aerial  use  reflected 
prompt  and  wise  decision  and  swift  production. 

The  immense  material  equipment  forwarded  to 
France  and  England  for  the  aviation  supplies  and 
training  camps  there  as  well  as  for  the  manufac- 
ture of  airplanes  for  the  American  army  by  French 
manufacturers  is  extremely  noteworthy.  Hardly 
less  important  to  the  Allies  were  the  18,000  Amer- 
ican mechanics  who  were  sent  to  their  assistance. 

The  actual  shipment  of  a  considerable  surplus 
of  Liberty  engines  to  the  Allies  within  eighteen 
months  of  our  entry  into  the  war  was  an  excep- 
tional achievement. 

While  we  were  toiling  and  moiling  at  aircraft 
production  at  home  we  kept  the  shops  and  factories 
of  the  Allies  going  with  our  endless  supplies — in 
itself  an  achievement  of  the  first  rank. 

The  building  up  in  about  fifteen  months  from 
almost  nothing  of  a  great  executive  and  admin- 
istrative organization  and  an  aircraft  industry  of 
more  than  300  plants  and  more  than  200,000 


o 
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ex 
o. 

'3 

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a 
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V 

I 


-o 

3 
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2 

OJ 


Review  and  Prospect         277 

workers  that  had  already  achieved  an  engine 
production  greater  than  that  of  all  the  Allies  and 
that  was  soon  to  have  realized  a  corresponding 
rank  in  'plane  production,  is  now  seen  to  have 
been  a  supernormal  deed.  Viewed  in  the  per- 
spective it  seems  hard  to  understand  why  the 
ability  and  success  with  which  the  work  was 
being  prosecuted  were  not  understood  when  we 
were  in  the  midst  of  it. 

It  reflects  no  aspersions  on  other  fields  of  war 
production  to  say  that  the  most  lauded  and  appre- 
ciated of  them  did  not  do  better  than  the  aircraft 
producers.  A  few  not  invidious  comparisons  may 
be  made. 

The  war  had  lasted  a  year  before  the  first  or- 
dered ship  was  delivered  to  the  Shipping  Board. 
The  first  steel  ship  on  order  from  an  Atlantic 
Coast  yard  was  not  delivered  until  September, 
1918. 

Only  80  tanks  were  completed  when  the  ar- 
mistice was  signed  and  only  16  had  been  floated 
overseas. 

Up  to  May  I,  1918,  only  85  heavy  Browning 
machine  guns  had  been  turned  out. 

Practically  no  hand  or  rifle  grenades  that  were 
satisfactory  were  delivered  from  American  facto- 
ries until  about  the  end  of  hostilities.  Before 


278  Wings  of  War 

November  n,  1918,  we  had  shipped  to  France  only 
181  75-millimeter  guns  and  only  114  155-mms. 

Our  total  shipments  of  artillery  of  all  kinds  were 
815  units  and  the  total  production  2034. 

This  may  be  compared  with  a  total  production 
of  16,000  Liberty  motors  and  more  than  30,000 
air  engines  of  all  kinds.  Exclusive  of  the  1800 
Liberty  engines  shipped  over-seas  in  'planes,  6210 
were  floated  uninstalled. 

The  total  shipments  of  combat  'planes  to  France 
were  about  2000  as  against  815  guns. 

Of  trench  mortars  we  had  completed  only  about 
1500  at  the  signing  of  the  armistice.  We  produced 
only  101  anti-aircraft  guns,  counting  only  complete 
units. 

These  facts  are  cited  merely  to  show  that  even 
with  unlimited  financial  resources,  great  manufac- 
turing capacity,  splendid  executive  ability  and 
with  speed  of  production  as  the  supreme  objective, 
miracles  cannot  be  accomplished.  Except  in 
respect  to  service  rifles  and  machine  guns,  it  re- 
quired a  year  and  a  half  to  get  into  the  full 
volume  of  production  that  the  magnitude  of  the 
war  required.  In  fact,  we  found  that  we  could 
not  adequately  equip  an  army  of  millions  from 
our  own  factories  before  the  spring  of  1919,  that 
is,  two  years  after  the  war  began.  Had  not 


Review  and  Prospect         279 

France  and  England,  but  especially  France,  been 
able  to  furnish  the  artillery  and  much  of  the  other 
equipment  of  our  first  two  million  men,  we  would 
have  contributed  almost  nothing  to  the  effective 
land  forces  of  the  Allies  before  the  spring  of  1919. 
The  offset  of  this  deplorable  fact  is  that  we  were 
able  to  supply  the  Allies  with  vast  quantities  of 
war  materials  for  their  factories  and  food  for  their 
armies  and  civilian  populations.  While  we  were 
taking  the  punishment  in  the  form  of  two  years 
of  delay  for  our  incredible  folly  of  not  preparing 
for  war  we  were  able  to  contribute  decisively  to 
keeping  our  friends  in  the  field  until  we  could 
come  up.  The  time  it  took  us  to  get  ready 
shows  clearly  how  helpless  we  would  have  been 
even  in  a  defensive  war  against  Germany  or  any 
other  first-class  military  power  if  the  navy  could 
not  hold  the  seas. 

In  profiting  by  the  expensive  lesson  of  the  recent 
war,  our  authorities  must  give  great  attention  to 
aircraft  of  all  sorts.  In  a  future  war  we  shall  be 
largely  dependent  upon  the  degree  of  progress  that 
the  civil  utilization  of  aircraft  shall  make  in  the 
meantime.  To  promote  civilian  interest  in  aero- 
nautics and  to  keep  alive  some  of  the  aircraft  or- 
ganizations that  were  created  during  the  war, 
liberal  government  appropriations  are  necessary. 


280  Wings  of  War 

Moreover  an  adequate  engineering  organization 
must  be  maintained  and  to  maintain  it  there  must 
be  ample  funds  available  for  experimentation  with 
and  the  purchase  of  new  types.  By  being  in  the 
market  for  the  purchase  of  a  considerable  number 
of  machines  yearly  the  government  will  not  only 
keep  aircraft  manufacturing  alive  and  vigorous  but 
it  will  make  opportunities  for  private  aeronautical 
engineers  and  engineering  companies  to  continue 
their  researches.  There  is  thus  a  certain  need  for  a 
large  government  engineering  establishment.  As 
this  establishment  and  private  concerns  bring  out 
new  types  that  are  approved  and  adopted,  draw- 
ings and  blueprints  can  be  made,  dies  can  be  pre- 
pared, and  all  the  preliminaries  of  manufacture 
made  ready  against  the  day  of  need.  When  these 
are  ready,  quantity  manufacture,  through  the 
conversion  of  plants,  is  but  a  matter  of  a  compara- 
tively short  time.  But  beyond  this,  it  will  be 
necessary  to  maintain  constantly  on  hand  an 
amount  of  up-to-date  equipment  far  in  excess  of 
the  numbers  of  the  aviation  military  personnel. 
This  means  constant  renewal  and  scrapping  to 
keep  abreast  of  the  progress  of  the  art.  So,  an 
adequate  program  of  aerial  defense  will  provide  a 
considerable  volume  of  business  for  a  few  manu- 
facturers even  in  peace  times. 


Review  and  Prospect          281 

The  greater  the  civilian  interest  in  and  use  of  air- 
craft the  smaller  the  government  establishment 
may  be;  so,  it  would  seem  to  be  wise  economy  for 
the  air  service  to  use  its  aviators  and  all  its 
facilities  and  resources  to  stimulate  the  demand  for 
aircraft.  With  thousands  of  civilian  flyers  and  ma- 
chines there  will  be  a  sufficient  demand  to  maintain 
many  factories;  and  the  flyers,  the  machines,  and 
the  plants  will  be  ready  in  an  emergency.  The 
air  service  must  therefore  proceed  on  a  much 
larger  scale  with  its  plans  for  landing  fields  all  over 
the  country,  with  the  mapping  of  air  routes,  with 
the  encouragement  of  the  use  of  airplanes  in  the 
postal  service,  where  a  good  beginning  has  already 
been  made,  in  forest  patrol,  in  coast  patrol,  in 
meteorology,  with  the  encouragement  of  aeronau- 
tical clubs  and  associations.  All  this  work  could 
probably  best  be  done  by  creating  an  independent 
air  service  that  would  be  both  military  and  civil, 
though  there  are  not  lacking  arguments  against 
centralization  of  control. 

The  end  of  the  war  found  us  potentially  the 
world's  leader  in  the  quantity  production  of  air- 
craft. Most  of  the  machines  used  by  all  the  nations 
will  soon  be  obsolete,  so  that  we  have  only  to 
adopt  and  maintain  an  aeronautical  policy  corre- 
sponding to  the  size  and  resources  of  the  country 


282  Wings  of  War 

from  now  on  to  take  and  maintain  the  first  place 
in  the  air.  The  "jump"  in  the  next  war  will  be 
enjoyed  by  the  combatant  with  the  superior  air 
service.  It  is  conceivable  that  other  branches  of 
the  military  service  may  never  even  get  an  oppor- 
tunity for  action.  The  war  may  be  over  and  de- 
cided in  the  air  before  land  and  naval  forces  can  be 
utilized.  Have  we  learned  anything  from  this  war 
or  shall  we  again  lapse  into  indifference  and  again 
expect  our  leaders  and  builders  to  accomplish  the 
impossible  and  then  blame  them  instead  of  our- 
selves as  we  did  in  the  great  war  that  is  just  now 
receding  into  history? 


INDEX 


Advisory  Commission,  Council 
of  National  Defense,  16 

Aero-Marine  Co.,  19 

Aeromarine  plants,  New  Jer- 
sey, 134 

Aeronautics,    National    Advi- 
sory Committee  on,  14 

Air  battle,  description  of,  by 
Col.  Brereton,  203,  204 

Aircraft  Board: 
Atkins,  Lieut.  Commander, 

Arthur  K.,  29 
Deeds,  Col.  E.  A.,  28 
Howe,  Richard,  29 
Irwin,  Captain  Noble  E.,  29 
Montgomery,  Robert  L.,  28 
Squier,  Brig.  Gen.  Geo.  O.,  28 
Taylor,  Admiral  D.  W.,  29 
Thayer,  L.  R.,  29 

Aircraft  factory,  naval,  gov- 
ernment, 258-260 

Aircraft,      machine  guns  for, 
189-196 

Aircraft  manufacture,  centrali- 
zation of  responsibility,  132 

Aircraft,  naval,  manufacturers: 
Aeromarine  'Plane  &  Motor 

Corporation,  247 
Boeing  Airplane  Co.,  247 
Burgess  Co.,  247 
Curtiss  Aeroplane  &  Motor 

Corporation,  247 
Gallaudet  Aircraft  Corpora- 
tion, 247 

Standard  Aircraft  Corpora- 
tion, 247 


Sturtevant  Airplane  Co.,  247 

Thomas-Morse  Aircraft  Co., 

247 
Aircraft  production,  1-6 

American,  general  plans,  61, 
62 

Congressional         appropri- 
ations, 24 

Criticism,  261-271 

French      cooperation      re- 
stricted, 56 

Naval,  245-260 

Naval,  appropriations,  245, 

246 
Aircraft  Production  Board,  23 

Coffin,    Howard    E.,   chair- 
man, 23 

Deeds,  Col.  Edward  A.,  23 

Montgomery,  Robert  L.,  23 

Squier,  Brig.  Gen.  George  O., 
23 

Taylor,  Admiral  D.  W.,  23 

Waldon,  Sidney  D.,  23 
Aircraft  program: 

Army  and  Navy  Technical 
Board,  34-38 

Estimates,  26,  27,  28 
Aircraft  standardization, 

American  and  European,  42, 

43 

Airplane,  birthland  of,  7 
Airplane    cloth,    grades,    184, 

.185 
Airplane,      Martin      bomber, 

tests,  169,  170 

Airplane  patents,  royalties,  20 
Airplane  production: 

American,  history  of,  7-9 


283 


284 


Index 


Airplane  production — Cont'd 

England,  7 

France,  7 

Germany,  7 
Airplane    production    results, 

171-173 
Airplanes: 

Congressional  appropriation, 

17 

De  Haviland  4*5,  shipments, 

72 
Development  of  types,  135, 

136 
Fighting,  12 

Apparatus,  12 
Airplanes  in  service  at  front, 

data,  172 
Airplanes: 

Service,  selection  of  types, 

144-150 
Single-seater    pursuit,    158, 

159 
Speed    of,    compared,    157, 

158 
Sprucewood    for,    problem, 

174-180 

Two-seater  fighter,  159 
Airplane  training,  39 
Air  Reduction  Co.,  232,  233 
Air  Service: 
American,    French    codper- 

ation,  51-53 
German,  comparison,  73 
Allies,  production,  aid  to,  by 

America  (footnote),  55 
American  airplane  production, 

history,  7-9 
American  Handley-Page,  data, 

165 
American  motor,  standardized, 

68,  100 
American  Steel  &  Wire  Co., 

230 
Army    and    Navy    Technical 

Board,  aircraft  program,  34- 

3.8 
Aviation,  military: 

Chief  function,  2 1 0-2 1 4 
Classified — 

Bombardment,  199-204 


Observation,  199,  204 
Pursuit,  199,  204 
Aviation  section,  U.  S.  Signal 

Corps,  personnel,  8 
Aviation  situation  in  United 
States,  1916 — ,  12,  13 


B 


Balloon  manufacturers: 

Connecticut    Aircraft    Co., 

227 
Firestone  Tire  &  Rubber  Co., 

227 

Goodrich  Co.,  227 
Goodyear  Co.,  227 
Knabenshue  Manufacturing 

Co.,  227 

United  States  Rubber  Co., 
227 

Balloons  and  accessories,  data, 
236 

Balloons,  demolition,  fragmen- 
tation, and  incendiary,  216, 
217 

Biplane,  Caproni,  American 
made,  records,  167 

Boiling  Commission: 
Boiling,  Col.  R.  C.,  37 
Childs,  Lieut.,  U.  S.  N.,  38 
Clarke,  Capt.,  37 
Gorrell,  Edgar  S.,  37 
Hughes,  Herbert,  38 
Marmon,  Howard,  38 
Westervelt,  Commander,  U. 
S.  N.,  38 

Boiling  Commission,  foreign 
co6peration,  51,  52 

Boiling  Commission,  recom- 
mendations, 60 

Bombs,  airplane,  215 

Brereton,  Lieut.  Col.  Lewis  H., 
statement,  74,  75,  199,  200 

British  Air  Ministry,  contract, 
164 

Brock,  Arthur,  Jr.,  aerial 
photography,  211 

Bureau  of  Standards,  codper- 
ation,  183 


Index 


285 


Canadian  Aeroplanes,  Ltd., 
252 

Camera,  machine-gun,  use, 
223 

Cameron,  Maj.  C.  R.,  270 

Caquot,  Captain,  balloon  in- 
ventor, 226,  227 

Christofferson  Co.,  19 

Clarke,  Capt.  V.  E.,  report, 
26 

Clarke,  Lieut.  Col.  Virginius 
E.,  15 

Coffin,  Howard  E.,  16 

Colpitts,  E.  H.,  engineer,  207 

Corrnack,  Brig.  Gen.  J.  D., 
British  War  Mission,  re- 
marks by,  112, 113 

Cotton  fabric,  development  of, 
181-186 

Craft,   Edward    B.,   engineer, 
207 
Article  by,  207-210 

Crane,  H.  M.,  engineer,  82 

Crowell,  Benedict,  Assistant 
Secretary  of  War,  report, 
273-282 

Culver,  Col.  C.  C.,  206 

Cunningham,  James,  Sons  & 
Co.,  windlass  production, 
230 

Cunninghair.,  Maj.  A.  A., 
statement  by,  149,  150 

Curtiss  Airplane  Co.,  pro- 
duction, 41 

Curtiss  Co.,  9 

Curtiss  engine,  0X5,  122 


d'Annunzio,  Captain,  1 66 
Davis,  Col.  M.  P.,  270 
Day  ton- Wright      Co.,      pro- 
duction, 41 

Deeds,  Col.  Edward  A. : 
Aeroplane    accessories    and 

materials,  174-176 
Aircraft    production,   re- 
sponsibility, 138-143 


American   motor  standard- 
ized, 100 

Apparatus,  technical,  devel- 
oping, 30 

Chief  of  Equipment   Divi- 
sion, Signal  Corps,  23,  28 

Criticism    and    vindication, 
111-113 

Engineers  selected  by,  77 

Head  of  army  aircraft  pro- 
duction, 29 

Industrial  executive  officer, 
Signal  Corps,  23 

Liberty    motor,    conception 
of,  by,  66-74 

Liberty    motor    cylinders, 
117-120 

Liberty  motor  manufacture, 
difficulties,  85-87 

Liberty  motors,  development 

of,  97-101 
De  Haviland  4*5: 

Characteristics  of,  150,  151 

Production  of ,  151 
Disque,  Gen.  Brice  P.,  177 
Dope,    fabric,    manufacturing 

problem,  186-188 
Duesenberg  Motors  Corpora- 
tion, 10 


Eastman    Kodak    Co.,  aerial 

photography,  212 
Edgar,  Col.  C.  C.,  239 
Emmons,    Lieut.    Harold    H., 

32 

Engine  production,  94,  95 
Engineers: 

Burgess,  Starling,  10 

Clark,  Capt.  V.  E.,  10 

Curtiss,  Glen,  10 

Day,  Charles,  10 

Hall,  E.J.,  II 

Hunsaker,  J.  C.,  10 

Loening,  Grover  C.,  10 

Martin,  C.  M.,  10 

Thomas,  B.  D.,  10 

Vincent,  J.  G.,  10 

Vought,  C.  M.,  10 


286 


Index 


Engineers — Cont'd 
Willard,  Daniel,  10 
Wright,  Orville,  10 

Engineers  and  manufacturers, 

committee: 
Beall  and  Roberts,  95 
Chrysler,  Walter,  95 
Hall,  Lieut.  Col.  E.  J.,  95 
Heaslet,  James  G.,  95 
Leland,  Henry  M.,  95 
Wills,  C.  Harold,  95 

Engine  factory,  sites  for,  126 

Engines: 
American  type,  advantage, 

7i 

De  Haviland  4,  49 

Development    and    produc- 
tion of,  122-131 

Distribution  of,  130 

Liberty,  contracts  and  de- 
liveries, 129 

Liberty  motor,  49 

Rolls-Royce,  production  of, 
64 

Types  of,  comparison,   127, 

128 
Engle  Aircraft  Co.,  production, 

41 

Equipment,      personal,      avi- 
ators', 215,  219-224 


Fekete,  Mr.,  engineer,  82 
Fergusson,    David,    engineer, 

82 
Fiat  Plant,   Schenectady,   N. 

Y.,  cooperation,  128 
Fisher  Body  Corporation,  pro- 
duction, 41 
Fletcher,  Peter,  182 
Flying  boat: 

Model  40,  252 

Model  MF.,  253 
Flying  fields,  240-243 

Construction,  cost,  240,  241 
Flying  machine,  heavier-than- 
air,  7 

Invented  in  America,  7 


Foch,  Marshal,  admonition, 
272 

Ford  Motor  Co.,  97 

Forests  Products  Laboratory, 
Madison,  Wis.,  179 

Foulois,  Brig.  Gen.  B.  D.,  15 

Fowler  Aircraft  Co.,  produc- 
tion, 41 

Fuller,  Col.  A.  L.,  Army  Air 
Service,  article,  234,  235, 
270 

G 

Gallaudet  Co.,  19 

Garros,  Roland,  French  avi- 
ator, 191 

Gas: 

Helium,      non-inflammable, 

231 
Hydrogen,  production,  231 

Gas  production,  Norton  pro- 
cess, 232,  233 

G.  E.  M.  Engineering  Co., 
aerial  photography,  212 

General  Vehicle  Co.,  9 

Gillmore,  Col.  W.  £.,270 

Gnome  engines,  production, 
48 

Grand  Rapids  Airplane  Co., 
164 

Guillot,  M.  Georges,  45,  46 

H 

Hall,  E.  J.,  engineer,  77 

Hall-Scott  Co.,  10,  it 
Production,  41 

Hamilton,  Alex.  K.,  46 

Hawley,  Lieut.  Frank  M.,  46 

Heinrich  Co.,  19 

Herschell-Spillman  Co.,  co- 
operation, 128 

Hickham,  Maj.  H.  M.,  270 

Hispano-Suiza  engines,  47,  48 
Contracts  for,  124 

Horner,  Leonard  S.,  31 

Hunter,  Lieut.  Col.,  G.  B., 
270 


Index 


287 


Hutton,  Col.  W.   H.   H.,   15, 
32 


Issoudun        training        field, 
France,  242,  243 


Jewett,  Dr.  Frank  B.,  engineer, 
207 

Johnson,  Claude,  director 
Rolls-Royce  Co.,  125,  126 

Joint  Army  and  Navy  Techni- 
cal Board  program,  248- 

255 

Jones,  Col.  E.  Lester,  239 
Jones,  Lieut.  Col.  B.  Q.,  270 


Kahn,  Albert,  architect,  243 
Kenley,  Maj.  Gen.  W.  L.,  265 
Kilner,  Col.  W.  S.,  270 
King,  Charles  B.,  Signal  Corps, 

128 
Kite  balloons,  Caquot  types, 

255 
Knox  Motors,  10 


Lawrence  engines,  production, 

48 
Leland,   "Uncle"   Henry,  92, 

93 
Le  Rhone  engines,  production, 

45.  46 

Lewis,  Col.  Isaac  N.,  machine- 
gun  inventor,  193 
Liberty  engine: 

Adopted     by     British     Air 
Ministry,  113 

Birth  of,  76-84 

Origin  of,  63 

Tests,  89 
Liberty  engine,  parts  for,  made 

by: 

Aluminum  Castings  Co.,  88 


Burd      High     Compression 

Ring  Co.,  88 

Cadillac  Motor  Car  Co.,  88 
Delco  Co.,  89 
General  Aluminum  &  Brass 

Manufacturing    Co.,    88, 

89 

Gibson  Co.,  89 
Hall-Scott  Motor  Car  Co., 

88 
Hess- Bright  Manufacturing 

Co.,  88 

L.  O.  Gordon  Manufactur- 
ing Co.,  88 
Packard  Co.,  88,  89 
Park  Drop  Forge  Co.,  88 
Rich  Tool  Co.,  88 
Zenith  Carburetor  Co.,  89 
Liberty  motor: 
American  standard,  97 
Description    of    parts,    98- 

100 

Total  production,  109,  no 
Liberty  motor  contractors: 
Ford  Motor  Co.,  91 
General  Motors  Corporation 

(Buick  and  Cadillac),  91 
Leland,  H.  M.,  92,  93 
Lincoln  Motor  Co.,  91 
Nordyke  &  Marmon,  91 
Packard  Motor  Car  Co.,  91 
Trego  Motors  Corporation, 

9» 

Liberty      motor     production, 
102-115 

Incidents  of,  116-121 
Liberty  motors: 

Contracts,  91 

First,  making,  85-91 
Lidgerwood  Co.,  256 
Linde  Air  Products  Co.,  232, 

233 
Loyal  Legion  of  Loggers  and 

Lumbermen,  177 
LWF  Engineering  Co.,  252 

M 

Machine  guns,  shipments,  193, 
194 


288 


Machines : 

Night-bombing,  types,  162- 

168 
Scout,  for  training,  159,  160 

Machine  tools,  manufacture, 
American  methods,  69-71 

Marne  salient,  photographic 
data,  20 1,  202 

Martin,  Glenn  L.  designer, 
167-170 

Masks,  oxygen,  222 

Maynard,  Lieut.  B.  W.,  trans- 
continental airplane  flight, 
114 

McCauley,  Capt.  Theodore  C., 
non-stop  record  flight  by, 
114 

McKeen  Motor  Car  Co.,  wind- 
lass manufacturer,  230 

Menoher,  Maj.  Gen.  Charles 
T.,  270 

Milling,  Capt.  De  Witt,  15 

Minton,  J.  P.,  inventor,  207 

Mitchell,  Brig.  Gen.  William, 
15. 203,  270 

Mixter,  George  W.,  31 

Moore,  Frank  C.,  46 

Mullins  Co.,  164 

N 

Naval  Aircraft  Factory,  252 
NCL  Engineering  Corporation 

windlass  manufacture,  256 
New  York  Aero  Co.,  19 
Nordyke-Marmon    Co.,    pro- 
duction, 41 

Northcliffe,  Lord,  British  Mis- 
sion, codperative  engine 
manufacture,  125,  126 

O 

Oxygen  apparatus,  production, 
222, 223 


Pacific  Co.,  19 

Packard  Motor  Car  Co.,  10 


Patents  and  royalties,  141-143 

Pershing,  Gen.   John   J.,  rec- 
ommendations of,  60 

Photography  : 
Aerial,  210^214 

Accessories,  shipments, 

213 

Aviation,  German  offensive 
checked  by,  201,  202 

Fierce-Arrow  Co.,  10 

Pierson,  Col.  W.  F.,  270 

Pigeon  Frazer  Co.,  19 

'Planes,  bombing,  battle,  202, 
203 

Pomilio  brothers,  'plane  build- 
ers, 161 

Potter,  W.  C.,  265 

Pratt,  Col.  H.  C.,  270 

Pyrotechnics,  aerial,  215-219 

R 

Radio  telephone,  197-210 
Radio   telephony,   article,   by 

Edward  B.  Craft,  207-210 
Read,  Commander,  U.  S.  N., 

aerial  crossing  of  Atlantic, 

114 

Remington  Co.,  production,  41 
Review    and    prospect,    272- 

282 

Rinehart,  Howard  M.,  145 
Roebling,   Chas.   A.,   &   Sons 

Co.,  230 

Rubay  &  Co.,  production,  41 
Ryan,     John     D.,     Assistant 

Secretary  of  War: 
Address,  266-270 
Statement  by,  131 


Schoonmaker,     J.     M.,     Jr., 

engineer,  80 
Shepler,  Harry  L.,  31 
Signal  Corps  vindicated,  271 
Sims,  Admiral  W.  S.,  250 
Speny  gyroscope,  217 
Springfield  Aircraft  Co.,  pro- 
duction, 41 


Index 


289 


Squier,  Maj.  Gen.  George  O., 

15 

Standard  Aerocraft  Co.,  pro- 
duction, 41 

St.  Louis  Car  Co.,  production, 

41 

Stratton,  Dr.  S.  W.,  81 
Sturtevant  Co.,  10 

Production,  41 


Thomas- Morse  Co.,  10 
Thompson,  Melville  W.,  31 
Training    fields,    camps,    and 

supply,  238-243 
Traub,  Gen.  Peter  A.,  72,  73 
Tulasne,   Maj.,   French   Mili- 
tary Commission,  143 

U 

Union  Iron  Works,  10 

Union  Switch  &  Signal  Co., 

production,  45,  46 
U.   S.   Bureau  of  Standards, 

aerial  photography,  212 
U.    S.    Signal    Corps,    aerial 

photography,  212 


"Very"  pistol,  218 

Victor  Talking  Machine  Co., 

259 

Vincent,  J.  G.,  31 
Engineer,  77 

W 

Waldon,  Col.  S.  D.,  15, 16,  239 
Western    Electric    Co.,    radio 

telephone,  206,  207 
White,  Capt.  E.  P.,  non-stop 

flight,  114 

White,  D.  McCall,  engineer,  82 
White,  J.  G.,  Co.,  machinery, 

tools,  etc.,  54,  55 
Willys-Morrow       Co.,       pro- 
duction, 40 

Wisconsin  Engine  Co.,  10 
Wright  Brothers,  inventors,  7 
Wright-Martin  Co.,  9 
Production,  41 


Zimmerschied,  K.  M.,  metal- 
lurgist, 80 


"The  Maintenance 
of  Peace" 

The  Foundations  of  Domestic  and  International 

Peace  as  Deduced  from  a  Study  of  the 

History  of  the  Nations 

By 

S.  C.  Vestal 

Lieutenant-Colonel,  Coast  Artillery  Corps,  U.  S.  Army. 

Formerly  Colonel  339th  Field  Artillery, 

National  Army 

This  book  is  a  study  of  the  factors  that 
disturb  domestic  and  international  peace. 
These  factors  are  political  and  can  be  settled 
only  by  political  agencies — never  by  courts  or 
arbitration,  nor  by  indifference  and  neglect, 
nor  by  conferring  war  powers  upon  advisory 
bodies  not  possessing  authority  to  support 
armaments  by  taxation.  International  peace 
may  be  preserved  by  the  power  of  the 
majority  of  mankind  as  domestic  peace  is 
preserved  by  the  power  of  the  majority  in  a 
nation.  The  author  shows  how  this  desir- 
able end  has  been  and  may  be  achieved. 

G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

New  York  London 


LEADERSHIP 

By 

ARTHUR  HARRISON  MILLER 

Major,  Coast  Artillery  Corps,  U.  S.  Army;  Office  of 
the  Chief  of  Staff,  War  Plans  Division 

With  a  Foreword  by 
EDWARD  L.  MUNSON 

Colonel,  U.  S.  Army;  Chief  of  the  Morale  Branch; 
War  Plans  Division,  Office  of  the  Chief  of  Staff 

A  Study  and  Discussion  of  the  Qualities 
Most  to  be  Desired  in  an  Officer,  and  of 
the  General  Phases  of  Leadership  which 
have  a  Direct  Bearing  on  the  Attaining 
of  High  Morale  and  the  Successful 
Management  of  Men 

"Leadership"  is  included  in  the  Official 
List  of  Publications  recommended  by 
the  War  Department  for  study  and  refer- 
ence by  all  students  of  Reserve  Officers 
Training  Corps  Units  in  Universities, 
Colleges,  Military  Academies,  and  Schools 


G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

New  York  London 


UG      Knappen  -  Wings  of  war. 
633 


MAY  9     1951 


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